Jump scares can certainly be done well when they're more than just a scary image and a loud noise. Resident Evil Villageeven explores several kinds of horror that aren't often tackled by video games.
Indie horror games have long since drifted to these kinds of horror games, though even big AAA developers have turned their focus to other kinds of horror. While there are still plenty of titles around today that still use jump scares, many horror games have a renewed focus on things like atmospheric and psychological horror. This oversaturation certainly lead to a drastic shift in the kinds of horror games developers made. RELATED: Gotham Knights Teases More Court of Owls With Spooky Clip Things like shock horror, gore and jump scares ended up being overly used to a point that many started asking if jump scares even had a place in horror games. While that meant that fans got truly creative horror games, it also meant that many of these games focused heavily on the kinds of horror that would get reactions. The early 2010s saw a bit of a resurgence for horror games, with titles like Five Nights at Freddy'sreinventing the genre for the era of online content creators. While this trope was used lightly in the earlier days of horror games, there was a brief time where it seemed like every game had some kind of jump scare. Having an enemy leap out at the player from an unseen area after a moment of quiet is a tried-and-true method of getting some quick scares out of an unexpecting player. Jump scares and horror games have gone together since the earliest days of the genre, with games like Resident Eviland Alone in the Darkutilizing shocking moments to keep the player on edge.