The Left 4 Dead team have released a new entry on their official blog describing the methods used to make us scream.

Posting on the official L4D site, Randy Lundeen tells us that it all comes down to 4 main elements.

One of the goals of Left 4 Dead's art direction was to capture the tone and feel of being right in the middle of a horror movie. This meant making the environments look scary in a specifically cinematic way. To achieve this, we adopted four distinct "filmic" effects for our art direction: color correction, film grain, vignette and local contrast.

He then goes on to describe each method in depth, along with comparison shots. It really is quite interesting and is a great insight into exactly what makes a scary scene.You can check out the whole article here on the official L4D blog.

 

The Left 4 Dead demo is released to the public tomorrow, while those of the Steam community who already pre-purchased the full game have now been playing the demo exclusively for the past week. Reactions to the game have been mostly positive, although many complaints have already been voiced. Come and discuss what you think at the Steamfriends forums.