One interesting idea that I think might have a lot of potential would be to do a game based around childhood and children''s fears, I have a hunch that these things may persist on a sub-conscious level... maybe.

Okay so the idea is that it is like one of those children''s books where the child is scared of the boogie man. The problem is there really IS a boogie-man, and lots more.

Ie. If you have seen Spirited Away, the evil sorceress had a huge head.. I thought this was a little freaky and thinking about it it reminded me of the way children see adults (as giants).

Now how about a non-gory game that exploits childhood impressions and fears.. ie. fear of the dark, nightmares (running too slowly), etc.

The graphics are cartoony / claymation-like to add to the suspension of disbelief.

Oooohhh, it''s great to see my old thread again I''ve played quite a lot of scary games lately but none come close to one I mentioned almost two years ago: "Sanatarium". I don''t know if any of you ever played it but it''s an old fshion point & click adventure where you cannot die in (except for the last level).

The atmosphere in that game is one of total disbelief and metal illness. Totally freaked out. It''s watching the hallucinations of a deranged man (it actually is. The main opponent in the game is your characters'' mental ''evil side'' so to speak). It wasn''t scary because of the gore or the ''edge'' that the player was on (heck! you couldn''t die!) but it was just watching the absurd and scary fantasies of a deranged man. Awesome.

A survival horror quiz game, like Who Wants to be a Millionaire meets Halloween / Scream / loads of horror movie cliches.

So, the player has to answer questions to guide the onscreen character to safety. Whenever the player gets the correct answer the character does something clever, if the player gets it wrong then the character does a dumb horror movie cliche (like go into the basement to check on that noise, not notice the lead pipe in the corner etc). Another example would be if the character is running away, and there is an obstacle they could trip on, if the player gets the right answer(s) then they don''t trip over.

If the player gets too many questions wrong, the character gets caught by the monster / deranged killer / alien / flock of birds ;-).

One problem would be that the wrong choice idea, is kind of incompatible with the three wrong answers and you are out. (At least dramatically?)

This wouldn''t be so much of a horror experience as a tension / lots of pressure on the player.

Hmm I''m not sure if that would be scary Ketchaval

The games that scared me the most were System Shock 2 (I stopped after the 3rd level because of this, go ahead and call me a wuss ;P ) and those marine levels in Alien vs. Predator 2. I remember when I was with like 10hp, and after crossing a room to get to the door on the other side, I looked back (I always do =P ) and there was a medkit right in the middle which I had overlooked. I didn''t have the guts to go back and grab it. =P

There was also this time when I saw something running fast towards me in my motion radar, I grabbed the mouse really tight, waiting for the thing to come out of the dark in the middle of the screen, suddenly it was right over me and I couldn''t see anything, I thought "what the f*ck", looked up and in that exact moment an alien destroied the vent above me and jumped, it was like the scariest 5 seconds ever =)

On the other hand, about an year ago a friend of mine had come over and brought his PC, some of my other friends showed up too so we took turns playing Alien vs. Predator with 3 PCs, and there were a few games when I was an alien playing against 2 marines, and I could see fear in their eyes, they almost jumped when I suddenly came out of nowhere, they were like screaming "damn, he''s here!! kill him! kill him!!!!" "where is he? ahhhhh" =P So a scary game doesn''t always mean a scripted story, in this case it was just the immersion, and the fact that aliens tend to ambush a lot (with all the stuff already mentioned that come with this), specially in weird places like walls and ceilings, and when one of them shows up it''s really tense, you only have a few precious shots before they get close range, if you miss its easy for it to dodge your fire while killing you and you last only 2 seconds ;P

The movies that scaried me the most were House on Haunted Hill and Gothika. Maybe you can get ideas from there. Gothika relies more on build of suspense before a ''boo'' and the whole hallucination thing, I also noticed that the ambience is all like "there''s no way you can escape" - I saw the movie with some girl friends and I was teasing them cuz they almost jumped out of their chairs all the time ;P they were trying really hard not to do that and still one of them even screamed (remember the pool scene when the girl closed her eyes... ) hehe, I have to admit it was really scary in some parts =)

AvP was another good one. The problem with it was the same as the problem with Silent Hill: Even though the enemies jumped out at you in terrifying ways, you were generally more than a match for them. In higher difficulty levels they were much stronger, but since most players go through on the easier setting the first time, they know when to expect critters, and the scare is greatly reduced.

Well...two firsts...Iron Chef''s first short post and a necro that didn''t get closed!

Anyway, it looks like everybody seems to be leaning toward spontaneity in hallucinations and ''monster'' placement, darkness in healthy amounts, and constant ''on-the-edge''ness.

I''d say that pretty much catches everybody up...

So, with all that, I''d say that, first and foremost, the character(s) should always feel weak. The thing I didn''t like about AvP was that even if I jumped out of something onto a marine scratching and biting, it''ll still take a few hits to kill them. Jotaf said in his little story that he KNEW the thing was coming, was WAITING for it, but was still SCARED out of his mind when the thing came out...and it still might not have killed him. (Just, you know...using that as a little fakie scenario)

Another thing I''d say is that the methods to fight off whatever''s after you should be extremely limited (the ''running away too slow'' example above is good) unless the character should have lots of ammo (member of SWAT separated from a group and then...whatever, all that crap). This applies to the first thing, too; if the character should be more resilient, then...they...should...be.

And I guess that''s it...



BTW, can''t think of any games that really scared me except for Silent Hill 1...all that fog...*shudders*

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"TV IS bad Meatwad...but we f***in need it"

If you''re a girl under the age of 12, and you''re high on marijuana...don''t ride your bike. -TRUTH

First, i think people get scared for different reasons. Some people are afraid of things jumping out at them suddenly (like me). Some are afraid psychologically. Some are afraid of gore.

A movie that really scared me was Stir of Echoes. It really wasn''t scary after you finish watching it, but while you watched it it was pretty frightening. What they did was give you a sudden scene of gore (a finger nail snapping off) in the middle of a scene where you couldn''t expect it. The main character was like taking a sip of a cup of coffee or something and then suddenly you see a finger nail snapping off. That is some scary stuff for the rest of the movie. It makes you feel like at any time something can jump out at you. It wouldn''t matter if there was scary music or not, you felt like at every second of that movie you could be scared. The rest of the movie wasn''t scary at all.

I think that''s the easy way to go about it. Scare them unexpectently in the beginning and for the rest of the game they''ll be worried that they will get scared again.