Sounds and music can add alot to the atmosphere. Thief 3's mission, The cradle, does this nicely. For anyone who hasnt played it, the mission takes place in an old orphanage later converted into an insane assylum which is quite scary in itself. The sound effects are awesome(Crying children, banging, etc) which creates tension and the player creeping and every corridor and when looking around each corner.

Anyone who enjoys scary games, I recommend Thief 3 just for this level.

Anticipation is what makes a game scary. Your imagination will always make something seem more scary than it is. hearing noises coming from around the corner will always be more scary than actually confronting the creature that made the noise.

I don't exactly know why,
but while so many newer games can't scare me,
I sometimes got scared so that I held my breath for some time by the old WOLFENSTEIN 3D (1991), although you can't exactly say it hat realistic graphics and a good sound engine *g*
but sometimes when there came a nazi around the corner standing right before me, and I didn't expect it...

realms of the haunting could also be quite scary sometimes.

the guy mentioning "the game where the guy could transform into a monster" or something, are you talking of Lands Of Lore 2 ?
That could also be scary, yeah.

There was a great article (quite a while ago I think before System Shock 2) in Computer Games Magazine about this. I can't recall if it was by Warren Spector or just included lots of quotes from an interview. But one point that was brought up was creating the feeling that around every corner there *might* be something to scare you. Sometimes having nothing there can be scarier than a bunch of blood and gore. So in the Thief games, Dues Ex, and System Shock games, they use this approach. I wish I could remember more from the article. I couldn't find it online.

The scariest game i've played to date is definately "Project Zero" by tecmo..

The reason for this is because of how much the game plays on the natural fears that come instinctively to human beings.. In the game you play as a young girl (that has the unusual ability to see ghosts) who goes into a haunted mansion in search of her brother who went there and dissapeared (he went in search of someone else who dissapeared in the mansion too)..

The game fills you with a sense of impending danger when you journey through the mansion armed with nothing but a flashlight and a mystical camera which u can use to fight the ghosts by taking pictures of them (sounds silly i kno but it really works)

The fact that the main character is just a young (maybe 16 yr old) girl makes the player, from the start feel helpless and vunerable against the powerful ghosts that inhabit the area (not to mention 'the calamity', but we wont go into that).. Also the fact that you as a player is armed with nothing more than a camera (which wouldn't be the first weapon i'd pick up in a fight against supernatural evil) also bring a sense of aprehension and fear to player.. I mean, if you look at scary games in the past, they could get away with using zombie's and fleshy monsters to frighten the wits out of people because it was something new to video games that hadn't been done before.. But to be fair, when ur battling slow-moving zombies (that can only harm you at very close-range) with a rocket-launcher or minigun it sort of defeats the object of feeling scared and helpless in an area filled with vicious hell-spawn..

In my oppinion, the scariest games are those that kno how to make you the player feel vunerable to the point were you would look at the main character of the game and say "man!! if that was me i'd either kill myself or run and hid under a bush for a very very long time!!"

To create a scary game you need:

- An intense atmosphere (utilising a mixture of 'eerie' and 'violently terrifying' sounds as and where appropriate)

- An engrossing and complelling storyline which is as vivid and as disturbing as you can possibly imagine

- a collection of the most disturbing and uncomfortable backdrops/stages/scenery/environments that have ever been thought up

- Darkness.. as much as possible.. humans naturally fear the uncertain and that which we do not know so having darkness in a game makes the player feel like at any point you could be only three or four footsteps away from the most terrifying creature ever imagined and you wouldn't be able to see it until it was too late..

I hope this helps!!

I think what I'm getting at is, if you have highly exaggerated "scary" stuff, a lot of players will see it as a farce. Also, people can only experience fear for a certain amount of time before they block it out one way or another, so you can't make every single minute of the game scary. If you have a happy scene every now and then, the scary stuff will seem even scarier by comparison.

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Original post by ArchangelMorph - Darkness.. as much as possible..

I felt Doom3 failed to be scary because it was *too* dark. Having to strain your eyes is annoying, and annoyance breaks immersion, which is the key to frights. System Shock 2, as others have mentioned (hey, have you read the reviews on Amazon?) is terrifying, and doesn't feature a single dark area in the whole game.

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Original post by onyxflame I think what I'm getting at is, if you have highly exaggerated "scary" stuff, a lot of players will see it as a farce.

Don't wish to beat on Doom3 too much (except that I feel it was a textbook example in how *not* to make a game scary), but this is a good point. Some 'horror techniques' are so cliched that people will spot it immediately. Doom3 used the techniques that ID used 10 years ago. Result=predictable.

Having said that, I remember I got scared by Catacombs 3D, so what do I know? :)

Doom III wasn't scary. It made you jump a lot, which isn't the same. Sure, for the first 10 minutes after the accident I was a tad scared, but being in a constant high of fear just dulls it. All of the "fear" in DoomIII doesnt rely on tension, it just relies on you jumping when something pops out of thin air in front of you. After 30 minutes I was so incredibly bored that I uninstalled it and gave it back to the friend I borrowed it from.

Now Aliens Vs Predator 2... That's a perfect example. Excellent music, excellent pacing, excellent sounds, excellent lighting and perfect event timing. Just after teh start of the game, you're cut off from the rest of your squad and you start hearing things, seeing things which freak you out. For example, you're walking along a coridoor and you hear a Predator. Of course you stop, because you're immersed and you're already scared by the darkness, and music. You walk forward and hear a guy screaming. You step into the room, just in time to see a guy being pulled into a vent by something. You walk around the vent, keeping your eye on it and keeping your distance and then you hit something. You turn around and there's 3 skinned bodies hanging from the ceiling.

A few tips as a level designer:
+Darkness != fear. Contrast = fear. Try to create a stark contrast in the brightness rather than making everything dark. Strobing/flickering lights can help, but don't overdo them.

+Being able to hear something, but not see it is fantastic. Also quick glimpses of something before it scuttles away are great. For example, in one of my levels a player is moving through a vent and they can hear something running around in it with them. They go around a corner and see something dark run off. The actual thing they saw was just a black box. They only see it for a split second, so make sure they cant actually make out what it is. Also note in Aliens Vs Predator 2 you have the motion tracker, so you can tell that something's moving, but you have no idea what it is. Unfortunately, there isn't a way of replicating this without making it a complete rip-off.

+Music can make or break the immersion. A steady pulsing beat with slight techno/groaning can scare the living bejesus. Also having a quick buildup track can do well, if used sparingly to try and fool the player into thinking that something's gonna happen.

+You have to completely immerse the player, so no hints that they're in a game. Nothing breaks immersion more than stopping and thinking "Ok what am I meant to do now?" or "Where do i go now to complete this level?". Puzzles dont do well when you're trying to build tension.

+When something's about to happen, make sure the player knows it. A perfect example is in the origional Unreal. You walk into a coridoor and the door in front of you slams shut. You try to walk back but the door you came out of slams shut. One by one, each light in the room turns off.

Do these tips, and create tension rather than saying "boo" every other second and you'll have loads of people banging on your door complaining about brown trousers :)

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Original post by Kuladus Or subliminal flash horrofic images on the screen, ala that game, whose name i forget ... where the guy can turn into a monster.

It was The Suffering, and it was a terrible idea (at least the way it was implemented). It was annoying, not scary.

In fact, the game is basically a catalog of what not to do in a horror game.

Kinda new...completely and totally...to horror games...

Is it immensly difficult to fall onto the margin of "good horror game" or is it just that everyone is doing it wrong?

-Ajain