If you''ve got Half-Life, I recommend that you pick up and play through the ''They Hunger'' series of mods, by Neil Manke. Sheer genius, and really quite scary. They implement many of the ideas discussed in this thread.

The scariest gaming experience in my life was when I played Riven at 2:00am, with all the lights out, headphones on, and no-one else in the building. The sheer lonliness of the place is horrifying.

Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates
- sleeps in a ham-mock at www.thebinaryrefinery.cjb.net

- Make the player be unsure of being in danger or not
- Make the player think he is safe and then proove otherwise.
(inclds this roommate thing)

in Alien vs Predator are some deadend rooms where one can camp knwing he is "safe" from the aliens.
Like an end of a hallway or a singe room with one door. So one camps here knowing that he cannot "camp" there forever. This i think is also a reason why Avp is somewhat scary

(FPS) or you are in/on a abandoned city /haunted house / island / a space colony or whatever.
There is a train/airplane/car/submarine/spaceship etc that is the only way to get away from there (or it seems so). So the player is in middle of somewhere not knowing if his chance is already gone away.

hmm this isn''t really original

Kwizatz:

Yup! Even seen the trailer, can''t wait til the game comes out.



-------
Me Hardguy.
and here is my game...

I know you''re all going to cringe but I seriously thought "The Cell" was freaky when I saw it. It had amazingly screwed up visuals, and the whole idea of being in someone''s mind that you can''t escape is quite disconcerting.

*spoiler alert*
***************
that scene where the psycho is turning the lever and extracting the cop''s intestines was so seat-squirmy, because the psychiatrist lass was just sitting there, doing nothing, not helping!!! I felt like screaming to her: "Get up you bitz! Go and help him"! but she just wouldn''t! That goes back to the lack of control which is hard to implement while at the same time making an enjoyable _game_.
*end spoiler*
*************

Basically, what I''m saying is that good imagery can make things scary as well, not just sound. For instance, in System Shock 2, where there''s that zombie who hanged himself from the ceiling and is just rotating slightly... that scared me a lot when I first saw it =0

But sound is good too (ie. the zombies is SS2 who walk around saying "I''m Sorry" right before they whack you over the head)

I think the hallucination thing is a great idea. I like games that mess with your mind. Back in the Blood days, one of the best things about that game was how woozy and unstable you became when the spiders bit you. You could see them coming towards you to bite more or kill you but there was nothing you could do about it. Alice was such a great game because the whole thing was like one bad trip. I think the sanitarium idea is great. I haven''t played a game yet with that as the theme that''s kept my attention.

I have to agree, sometimes the scariest points in games are when it''s possible to die at any given second, but a lot of this depends on the player too. If someone is really into it, playing at night, alone, in the dark, with headphones on, it''s much easier to scare them then if they''re playing during the daytime with a bunch of friends.

A couple games have freaked me out over the years. the two most memorable were probably Alien Vs Predator 2 (the first few human missions were insanely creepy, then when you first see the Aliens, I crapped my knickers) and also Alice. The whole game is just creepy, but the opening video where the stuffed rabbit cocks it''s head and says "Save us Alice!" creeped me out big time

One time I was playing Resident Evil and it was all dark and fairly silent in my house (when i play games at night, i wear headphones so nobody would hear me). All the sudden when I had all this fear building up, this creature jumped and me and then my mom poked me in the back to get my attention. Damn did I jump!

Pull up your favorite search engine and look for scary stories. I did this a couple years ago on Halloween night for lack of anything better to do, and I didn't sleep right for the next month. Most of them are cheesy, but some of those stories will f*** you up.

One of the things you must keep in mind is that it's impossible to use the same means in movies and games as you would in writing, because movies and games are visual, and writing is not. For example, one of the most effective ploys I've seen in writing is to describe a room as becoming suddenly cold. You can't do this in a visual medium because the audience can't feel the cold. However, a good alternative is to make the room darker.

The scariest monsters are those that make no sound at all, save for loud footsteps. An enormous dark shape with dripping fangs and gleaming blood-red eyes is ten times scarier when all it does it stare at you.

Human monsters are at their best when their eyes never leave your face, and when they move slowly and methodically, like robots. The exception is when they move inhumanly fast, like the mad doctor in the recent remake of "The House on Haunted Hill." The key is to find the extreme and use it in unexpected ways. Make the monster seem overly unnatural, and it will automatically be terrifying.

Human monsters can be terrifying, but the scariest monsters in all the works I've seen are anything but human. It's even better when the monster is something we normally construe as harmless. For example, I read a story once in which there was a cloud of vapor hovering at the top of an aircraft hangar, and when the lights were turned out, the vapor emitted a faint glow. This in itself wasn't very scary --- until the vapor suddenly started moving soundlessly and malevolently toward the person who had shut off the lights.

Anyway, do your research, and I think you'll find all the answers you need. And since I mentioned it, it's been a couple years since I've read any good horror stories, and Halloween is only a stonethrow away. . .

[edited by - Tom on October 20, 2002 1:31:34 AM]

Playing ResEvil: Nemesis at the mo'' it uses some clever techniques that (are probably standard) for instance as I go through one room I see a glimpse of ''something'' crawl up a wall far behind me- you are left 1. not knowing what it was, 2. in a state of suspense wondering when it will jump out at you. 3. not sure if it was a monster or your imagination.

Likewise, there is a section where you are being followed .. and you see a clue that it is very nearby .. won''t give the example but for instance consider Metal Gear Solid when it is cold, you can see Snake''s frosty breath. So a horror game could use ''indirect'' clues like this to show that the monster/killer was close-by. This could even be done in a less scripted way the RE, ie. that the game has a system whereby any creature that is doing X produces side-effect Y. Ie. Enemy guards also have frosted breath in cold rooms.

Near the end of the game make a screen popup saying "You have pirated this game, so I will now format your computer. Have a nice day", with a delete window that won''t close popup