Ha. Actually this is for next Holloween. I'm making a HUGE DLC sized mod (A 10+ hours main story and plenty of side quests) and I plan on finishing in like 7 months. That then leaves me like 3 months before Halloween, and I figure instead of moving directly into the sequal, I would make a Halloween mod! So it wont be out for a year, but I needed to decide whether or not to do it. So far I have gotten some incredible ideas from this thread, and I think it's definitly possible. It will take some creativity from me, and a lot of duct tape, but I think it's entirely possible.

Go with near silent noises that are associated with a certain enemy in a empty room that is nearly pitch black. Make it so that any dungeon goes down and have it so as you continue forward their is no way back, and be sure to add the occasional skeleton of fallen adventurers on the path (but don't place them in comical locations or in mass like Bethesda). Create suspense through the use of sound effects and visual aids, and not by throwing wave after wave of enemy at every given moment. Only give the feeling of difficulty when the end is almost near and be sure to give a challenge equal to expectations you have set up. That is just general rules for good jump horror, but from my personal expereince if you use Skyrim's way of setting up spiders, but if you do it subtly only giving hints and then unleash a massive spider with glowing red eyes in a large room with three or so candles on the walls it would total freak me out. And good luck, and hope it turns out well. :thumbsup:

PC elitists.

Cthulhu?

Perhaps... We won't know until it gets me, will we? :toughninja:

this. playing tricks with the player, making them of afraid what they DONT see... good horror is pretty much always like that; the idea is to build up the atmosphere so that the monster could be an adorable puppy and still scare you half to death because you set up every distance yelp and every sound of scampering around the corner just right...

I remember seeing a lot of videos talking about what to do and what not to do on the Escapist. Not just Zero Punctuation (who seems to go into this in every supposedly "horror" shooter), but others, like Jimquisition, too.

Anyway, what makes people afraid in horror situations is, ultimately two things, *the unknown and powerlessness*.

The sense that they are losing all control over the situation, or that they have no idea what is going on is terrifying to people.

If you want to make a creature scary, never show it to the player until it's too late. A monster you can see and fight is not scary, it's just more XP waiting to be grinded. A monster you can't see, but know is stalking you is terrifying.

I actually get most scared when playing games like Thief specifically because I often have quite a deal of trouble finding my enemies in a way that doesn't get me, myself found. I feel safe in the shadows, but if I have to leave that glorious comfort of mother darkness to bolt across a well-lit area to reach the next point of safety, and I haven't ascertained exactly where every threat is yet, my anxiety is going to shoot up.

Likewise, you can never really be scared of a threat you know you can take in a fight. You need to take away the player's ability to kill the enemy, at least until they meet some sort of special condition. Alternately, make killing the enemy meaningless because more will just spawn, and you've functionally just given away your position to try to fight - but even then, you need to make it take so many resources that no player can take on more than a couple of them. However, this hurts the above principle that the less you see of the monster, the more scary it is. The more you see the monster, the more you understand how it works, and people fear the unknown for they have no control over it, but regain some of that control and power when they start to know. That's why people keep saying they're scared of deep water - you can't see the monster in it.

Some games that really get down the notion of terror really well actually go all the way - you get no weapons at all, you can only run and hide. You can only complete the quest and escape the monster by completing puzzles while the monster is looking the other way. Look at games like Amnesia: Dark Descent for that.

In fact, if you want an ultimate scary monster to throw at a character who laughs as he cleaves dragons clean in half, make the monster a completely invisible ghost that cannot be harmed by weapons or magic at all and that walks through walls. (Enemies that go through walls always creep me the **** out.) Make the player capable of hiding from the ghost, but having only a vague sense of where it is. Make it do something like kick debris on the floor around or have a set of footprints in the snow or the like that give the player something to look for, but make it silent so that the player can never feel safe unless they can see exactly where those footprints are leading right at that moment. Then, make it so when the ghost has spotted the character, and is sneaking up on him and getting very close, make it SCREAM. Something nice and fingernails-on-the-chalkboard awful. Something that would be annoying normally, but when you have someone flipping out about not knowing where the ghost is, the will completely void themselves and start diving in a panic for the nearest hidey-hole.

It's actually probably preferable if it doesn't kill the player - dying then reloading breaks the immersion, and horror depends more than anything else on making the player being immersed in the world. Of course, if they completely forget about stealth altogether, and just stand out in the open, waiting to die, you have to kill the player, but the longer the player can just keep running away and hiding from the monster, and less they are reloading quicksaves, the more your immersion can start to make them stab at their own shadow.

This. Standing on a pressure plate and having something smack my character in the face makes me jump so high I nearly destroy my keyboard.

But other than that, pretty much anything horror-themed scares me... I mean, even Bioshock scared me...

Something akin to WoW's Duskwood area (at the cemetery area) with those dark, deep blue hues, coupled with that girl in FEAR. Vampiric voices with the pitch of a Christopher Lee / Vincent Prince, out in dark, isolated forests engaged in necromancy in secluded huts. Always with a massive touch of suspense and house of horror type scenario. Dark arts type rituals where the congregation morph into something gory and turn on you.

Stuff like that always get me.

My interest is piqued now with this comic linked to before.

If you could pull something like the above (not just mine, there are heaps of great suggestions in this thread), you would have a winner.

Along with everyone elses great suggestions, I would recommend making pressure plates and other traps that are harder to spot and have creepier effects. The corpse of one of the monsters your facing in the game dropping down on you is a cheap example.

Hmmm. Or I could drop a normal NPC corpse on you. Maybe you meet someone at the beginning of the mod, but then you get split up. Later the person decides to... drop in. That could be horrifying.

Sometimes bear scares me, when I suddenly hear rrrawwwwrrrrrr.. lol.
But the worst for me are spiders. I'm sneaking through the cave and I look up and see giant spider on the ceiling waiting for me to jump on my [censored]in head. Bbllljjeeeee :S::S

Atmosphere, the fear of the unknown...

Amensia is a great example. I feel overall it's harder to be scared in a video game because you generally have some control, especially in action-packed "survival horror" games of today.

I remember one of the scariest moments for me in Amnesia was in the very first section of the castle you start in, I was creeping into a dark room and because of the shadows/lighting it seemed like this dark figure had silently emerged in front of me all of a sudden. I literally felt my skin crawl and my heart jump, only to realize a second later it was just a set of knight's armor like they have as decorations in castles. A set of freakin' empty armor was seriously one of the scariest moments for me in the game (and I'm not one to scare so easily in most games).

So when I go back and anolyze it, it was that fear of the unknown. I had just started playing this game blind that I had only heard everyone say was sooo scary, and I had no idea what to expect in terms of enemies, how I could die, etc. It was the atmosphere, the creepy, still quiet of that empty castle, the way the knight's armor seemed to emerge from the shadows as a trick of the eye given the dim lighting. For me it's not so much the sudden crashing sounds or the roar of some monster that gets me. I found those to usually be cheap distractions, especially given I'm generally playing these games while being super alert. It's better to be subtle. I think it would be so much more creepy and scary to have such a monster that would silently appear out of the shadows in front of you.

Later, when I got used to seeing the actual monsters, it wasn't really scary at all so much as an "oh crap, I gotta run or my character will die" thrill moment. So I do agree that it's better to tell than show, or rather to let the player hear rather than see.

Edit: To add on to the post above, and by way of an example to go along with my point, I always thought it would be interesting to have the player enter some high-ceiling section of a cavern or cave, and as they walk along there's these spider-like monsters hanging from the ceiling that are extremely difficult to spot unless you take the time to look around cautiously. And then they wait for you to get halfway in, and they silently slide down on top of you right after you pass them.

Or basically having any enemy type use some kind of sneak/stalk mechanic. Someone around these forums pointed out that the PC is the only one who can use sneak effectively, but having an enemy sneak up on the PC would be terrifying.

The scariest places are the Dwemer ruins.
Besides that your Dwemer enemies can come from anywhere, the constant noises there really adds to the atmosphere.

I think we can all agree that the unseen gets most people going. For me a sense of forboding, or simply something feeling out of place with no real explanation and something lurking around I can vaguely hear, but never quite see. As it's been mentioned before hooded figures or just shadows turning corners and then nowehre to be seen. The longer I walk through a dungeon and don't see an enemy the more eery I feel. I know something is out of place and my anticipation is building to a point of insanity. You could scare the [censored] out of me by just making we walk through a dungeon for awhile that had no enemies, and no music, only the ambient sound effects and the occasional bump from somewhere further down. Then at the very end place right out in the open a tresure, where upon grabbing it [censored] completely hits the fan, the lights are out and there's things everywhere trying to kill me, completely overwhelming and my sense of anticipation just turned into all out fear in which I'm guaranteed to make mistakes and be at a loss of coherent thinking. Also for some reason deer in the dark scare me, but that's probably just a weird personal fear from a traumatic event.

I have yet to be in a Dwemer ruin! I'm very thoroughly working my way across the map, so I've only really been to Whiterun hold, and The Rift so far. Neither have an Dwemer ruins that I'm aware of. I'll have to check one out.


Were you locked in a dark room with several deer as a kid? It definitly seems like darkness, the unknown, and sounds are the key here. Luckily in Skyrim I have access to all three!

Bears or just about anything in the wilderness that has noticed me, is making predatory sounds, and I can't figure out where it is and where the sudden attack will come from. This is more of an issue when my view or sight lines are not good.

My archer, stealth character doesn't like being the one being stalked.

Here are a few general things that creep me out:

--The undead. Even worse when you're in a crypt or something similar and only some attack while the others stay dead.
--Also, necromancers' tools. Just lying there.
--Butterflies. They're just gross. (I hate it when they fly out of nowhere, the little harbingers of death.) It's a rational fear! ; )
--Swimming. In. Caves. There were a couple places like this in Oblivion. I remember holding my breath irl during them.
--Glitches at the corner of the eye, so to speak.
--Tables set with untouched food and no guests. (Pan's Labyrinth, anyone?) Maybe a little sign that says don't touch the food?
--Blind, milky white eyeballs.
--Fragmented voices. Hearing things you can't quite catch is creepier when it's a person talking.
--Weird symbols drawn on floors/walls.
--Dead bodies moving/twitching but not attacking. (I saw a vid of a glitch in Skyrim where a corpse is shaking and shuddering
and rolling across the floor. Can't remember where I saw it...Gave me the chills. It shook itself outside of a cage once it was unlocked.
It was also practically naked.)
--Blood trails but no bodies.
--Absolutely normal, harmless bastions of calm. A well lit room with a comfortable looking bed for instance. You keep waiting for something to spoil it.
--And then the next time you do visit that nice room, something does happen.
--Light sources failing.

I also have a thing about faces:

--Faces disappearing/skin disappearing to show only the muscles underneath (brrrr.)
--Heads on backwards.
--Upside down faces on right side up people. (Where are your nine gods now?)
--Mismatched heads and bodies (recollections of bad neck seams from Oblivion. Noooo.)

I've played games since I was eight, and therefore games are not something that usually scares me.

But.

A gigantic, wide, open room, absolutely quiet, no sound at all, except for perhaps the wind blowing slightly outside, and a candle at the other end of the room, it's dark, and the enemy you're expecting is a very quiet one.

Now that, that really scares the [censored] out of me.

These are especially good ones. I will certainly have to try to lul the player in to a sense of security, perhaps in a 'normal' seeming section of the level. Only to betray their trust and scare the crap out of them. Good. Good...


True. I'll have to take a scary enemy, and make it silent. That coupled with perhaps you not being able to fight back, or it teleporting. >:D

Well any monster that looks like it will instant kill me scares me. I see trolls and get really scared but the best defense isa good offense

:D

There are some things that can be very surreal, like the Dwenmer ruins devoid of all organic life (save for the occasional Falmer), but there really isn't anything that scares me, certainly nothing that horrifies me. :shrug:

In a game like this the only potential way to unnerve/scare people is through atmosphere.

Hmmmm, well I will have to change that. I agree that atmosphere will be my greatest tool, since new creatures are out of the question, and few already in the game scare people. I'll mix it up...

One thing freaks me out the most are the runes placed by Npc casters, very difficult to see, wide range, and makes a huge sound.
As a stealth character, my perks allow me not to worry about traps, so magic runes always gets me.

Amnesia: Dark Descent. If you want to make something scary, study that game.