Too much death in character backstories? Even in a horror game?
The backstory of my five main characters involves a lot of death...
The protagonist, who has two adopted daughters and raises them alone, lost both his parents and doesn't even remember them (part of a curse), lost his sister, who died giving birth to one of his adopted daughters (I say daughter here and not niece because neither the protagonist nor the sister knew they were siblings), the real father doesn't want to know anything about her, and the other adopted daughter came from an orphanage (it's assumed her parents died as well).
That's the first three main characters and already I have a death toll of five. The other two characters, two brothers, lost a young brother very early on and during the course of the game, both their parents are brutally murdered. So that brings the death toll to eight.
Now, I don't really have a problem using death in my story (as you can plainly see), but at this point, I'm beginning to think I use death too much. My game is actually a horror game with lots of characters dying already (explosive decompression is involved at some point), but even then, should I cut down on the deaths in the backstories of my MAIN characters? Would it feel forced to use death a lot for the main characters?
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If death is "normal" in the backstories of the characters, then death loses its power for the reader in your main story. If people die left and right every few paragraphs, then you expect death to happen to everyone. It is no longer the ultimate fear, but more like a running gag (think of Kenny getting killed in every episode of South Park).
Horror is most intense if it intrudes into normal life. Living in war-torn Syria is certainly horrible, but hearing about yet another death there on the news no longer has much of an effect on most viewers in the US. Living in the US, on the other hand, can be quite idyllic, and hearing of a violent death in their US neighborhood will freak many people out. Horror is achieved more easily through contrast than through permanent blood and gore.
On the other hand, there is a fashion for "dark" fiction where everyone is broken and lives in continuous horror. If that is what you aim for, then you basically need everyone's family to have died a violent death.
I would write this as a comment to @What 's answer, but I don't have enough points for that.
I will focus on two things when trying to answer your question.
The first: Agreeing with @What ; contrast is crucial if death in itself should still be horrifying. Since there is a lot of death already, the focus of the reader's/protagonist's fear should not be on death itself, but something related to it which makes it different from "the previous deaths"...
The second: This is something that could help with the first.. What are we actually afraid of?". The "holy shit... this could happen to my daughters" is an important point. Especially since death is "normal" in this dimension. @What makes a brilliant point comparing death in Syria and the U.S., and I will take this example even further. Yes, we usually think "Oh my, that's terrible!" when we hear tragic news, BUT generally people don't actually CARE unless they have a direct link (social, cultural, geological) to the people involved. If we should fear the death of his daughters, we must care about them intimately. In order for us to believe or share the fear that the protagonist feels or develops, it must be natural to feel sincere empathy for them, even within the murder dimension. I believe character development is absolutely crucial for this. When we care for the characters there WILL be a contrast between their possible deaths and the deaths of "strangers".
I don't know the structure of your plot (and it may be irrelevant) but we must know and care for the people involved, in order to fear their deaths. After all, I don't walk around fearing that a stranger will be hit by lightning or hit by a car. I fear that my friends and family will.
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