How can you incorporate tension and suspense in mobile game design?

Sound and music is one of my favorite ways to transmit mood of any kind in a game. I especially love it when the sounds and music slowly creep up on you, so initially it is just beyond your attention floor, and slowly builds as you approach the new challenge. As players, we remember moments that have significant emotional impact, and sounds and music are an incredible way to make those magic moments stick with the player long after the challenge passed.

Making dynamic music is another way of effectively utilizing audio in horror games. This can be done through having multiple versions of a single music piece, with each version getting more intense. You would switch between those versions depending on the level of intensity in the game. This could depend on the distance from the player to the enemy, how low the player is in health, or many other values.

Since we are talking here about mobile games you should keep in mind that many players play these games without sound ON. And we should tell them explicitly we recommend using earphones.

Resource management is one of those systems that seems simple at its surface. but it has so, much, utility. Imagine a boss battle with as much ammo as you want. You can come up with your own strategies, and beat the boss your way. Not only is difficulty lower, but your player is more relaxed, and they have actually had a satisfying moment of self expression. But now imagine a boss battle with very little ammunition, and all of it for your starter weapon. The boss is suddenly so much harder, player anxiety spikes, and suddenly the game feels like a much darker place. Experiment with giving and taking away resources at different points of the game to tell a compelling story, and to keep the player teetering between anxiety and boredom.

Neil Gaiman once said his job was to take his readers by the hand, lead them down a dark alley and then let go. He's not wrong. There is very little more powerful than subverting the systems your players use. Short term it will feel disempowering but when they realize? They'll be empowered and invested in the story. Our Halloween special played with this. The primary player interaction in Dustland Runner is audio so we had a distress call lead the player to a new location. They never meet the new character but slowly explore and learn who they were, and what happened to them. This led to a beautiful, pseudo-supernatural payoff that also tied a bow on the story and got us back to the top of the loop. Let the player's hand go, it's fun:)

Although randomness was proven to be effective in creating unexpected moments in horror games, too much uncertainty could lead to issues in balancing the game. Downwell may be a good example of using randomness, but it is not a horror game. The first and sixth Five Nights at Freddy's games would be better examples as they also make use of randomness in the AIs of the animatronics.

When you're developing your game, consider developing your challenge curve so that players experience a higher difficulty as they learn a new skill or mechanic, then ease up a little so they can enjoy what they've learned. Then, ramp up the difficulty so they have to demonstrate a mastery (or learn a new way to use a learned skill) to get through a particular challenge. By combining this with the other techniques in this article (sound and music, resource scarcity, etc), you'll be able to inject the tension that you're looking for in your game!