What's scary in a game?

[blueskirt]

As someone said, "without imagination, there is no fear".
So don't go all the way giving clear picture of the shock thing. Leave something for player to imagine, because it'll be times stronger than whatever you can present.

Although I'm extremely unimaginative when it come to text, I agree with the imagination bit. Whenever a monster kills me in a horror game, the next time I will face the monster, a significant chunk of the fear will be gone because what I imagined was far worse than what happened. It's the promise of gore that's scary, not the gore itself.

[Anian]

The Penumbra people are making a new game (Amnesia...something), saw a little of play demo and reminded me of one the worst things that can happen...

Dark halls, you hear a scream or something else that makes you know that a monster is coming towards you. You start to run in the other direction. There's a room and you shut the doors, pull a chest or a table to support the heavy wooden door.
Monster is real close now. You can hear the footsteps, the howling, the scratching of nails etc. It hits the door. They shake but just avoid buckling. The noises outside get worse, like a hundred people moaning and screaming while the door takes slams and scratches from the other side. The hits are relntless, they just aren't stopping. Wood splinters in places. Time is running out.

After the initial shock and panic, the adrenaline and the survival instinct are now really kiciking in. You look around the room to find an alternative exit, another door or window or vent or anything. You try to find a weapon or anything that might postpone a horrible death...then you notice the noises stopped. Is it gone? Is it waiting for you or has it given up?

Try to look under the door, are any shadows moving? Was that a footstep? What do you do now? You can't stay here and you can't go outside.

I hope you get what I'm trying to say from the crappy writing. Point is that the monster doesn't have to even be seen (though maybe just it's acts would be enough) and not knowing what are you gonna do next is creepy.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

My first play of penumbra actually mirrored this sequence of events almost 100%.  I was in one of the rooms and I heard one of those ghost creature biped things skittering about and I shut the door and slid some boxes in front of it figuring the weight of the boxes would keep it from pushing the door open (since you can't actually SECURE doors in the game, which was lame but that's another story).  Then I hear a slam and one of the boxes starts to slide off the top of the other and I had to quickly push it back on, realizing that this plan wouldn't work (it had already detected me).  So I see an open vent on the ceiling above a table and try to get in it but unfortunately I need one of those crates in front of the door. 

Now if you've played penumbra you know your offensive options are SEVERELY limited.  I can't grab a pipe and beat the creature to death because the game just doesn't work that way, you hold things in an elastic type fashion and can swing them for a bit of momentum but they don't really do damage.  HOWEVER, apparently the coders designed weight to act as damage because as the creature pushed in the door and tried to wiggle in, I slammed the boxes against it repeatedly and crushed it to death...which at the time I thought was actually pretty neat. 

So yeah, I think the penumbra guys can pull off tense moments, but only because they stack the deck against you from the start and leave you with nothing but a bit of physics juggling and the ability to run and duck in shadows.  Aspects of the sequel especially felt really one-sided because there were several things that could serve as reasonable weapons (pickaxes, boards, pipes) and don't tell me a man or woman won't use one in a pinch because they will.  While I liked the 'idea' behind penumbra, improvised weapons would have made it a lot more fun for me in all honesty, especially since most of them would only be effective when pressed and not really be idea for the run and gun style of gameplay of an fps.