A Review of Game Design Techniques for Managing Suspense

Suspense is key to the enjoyment of games and interactive storytelling. Although suspense has been studied extensively in traditional media such as fiction and film, there has been relatively little research on managing suspense in games. As interactive media, games differ from traditional media in many ways. Although many conventional techniques for managing suspense still apply to games, certain suspense manipulation techniques are specific to games. In this paper, we discuss a framework for managing suspense in games and present a comprehensive study of various game design techniques for managing suspense. In particular, we focus on the use of game mechanics and game artifacts to manipulate suspense, which has not received enough attention in previous works. Our goal is to provide a comprehensive guide for game designers to explore different ways to manage suspense in their games or use it to analyze the suspense management techniques in existing games.