What does it take to scare you?

[Frontastic]

Slender Man.

Failing that, most of David Lynch's stuff.

Huge desolate places do it too. First time I entered Blackreach in Skyrim it un-nerved me greatly. It was pretty cool.

 

[TehCookie]

Helplessness, vulnerability, the unknown and despair. Somehow Persona 3 got it perfect with death. The support character just appears and says "I sense Death." The first time I had no idea what she meant and I just got the feeling if I stayed there any longer I would die so I just ran all the way home. Even after I learned he's just a super strong enemy I had no change of beating he still scared me since I knew I would die if I tried to fight him.

 

[Cecilthedarkknight_234]

being forced into a committed relationship with a woman and she is pregnant.

 

[Sampsa]

Spiders. Couldn't finnish Black Messiah because of them.

 

[Luca72]

I think the resident evil Remake has to be the most scary game ever made. I don't know why it was so much scarier than amnesia to me. But REmake has so many great and insanely scary moments it would take to long to sum them all up.

Was it that girl in the cabin? That's what really did it for me. The rage zombies freaked me out too, because the game doesn't really equip you for them. Really, it makes you feel helpless against anything fast. I started letting zombies live because it was too much of a hassle to burn the corpses, and I realized I needed to save ammo for the bigger monsters.

Pretty much jump scared, scary/ tense music scenes and a thing making a unrecognise/ inhuman sound that is echoing around you and you can't see it until it surpise you (I'm looking at you Regenerator from Resi 4)!

Wow, I completely forgot about those! Most of my RE4 memories are empowerment wanks with me clearing a village of crazy parasite people. That first time with the Regenerator though - I remember it was a cold looking hallway on that military island, and I heard this ragged breathing but couldn't see anything, and occasionally it almost heard like psycho, mumbling laughter.

Then the thing comes around the corner and smacks me while I'm surprised, so I unload a full clip of whatever I was using into it. Nothing happens, so I switch to the shotgun, and hit it once in the chest, once in the legs. Bam, legs go off. This is RE4! You can't fuck with me!

Then its ragged torso hopped off the floor and bit me in the face. I made a beeline for the last loading screen and shut the game off.

That game had basically tricked into thinking I was an unstoppable badass, and then it took away everything comforting (ie: guns). Also, on my first playthrough I missed the scope that shows Regenerator weak spots, so the whole last quarter of that game was needlessly terrifying.

 

[Nexxis]

A spooky ambiance is enough to scare me. Especially one that gives you a sense that danger is near and can strike at any moment, you just don't know how or when.
Also, the "unknown" in general scares me. Being in a situation and not knowing where you are, what to do, where to go, where the danger is, if there is danger, etc. It's why I like Amnesia, but I don't have the spine to play it. It's just, plays the "fear of the unknown" card pretty well, so it would scare the crap out of me. Just watching a Let's Play can give me nightmares (and it has multiple times).

 

[Dfskelleton]

I can be startled, sure.
But actually scared? My two favorite horror games, Silent Hill and Amnesia, both have one thing in common: tension. You're always fearing what's next. Silent Hill did this by having a loading screen between each room, so every time you even OPENED A DOOR, there was this sheer dread that the first thing you would hear is your radio freaking out.
Amnesia was just always tense, because there was the CONSTANT fear that the disfigured terrors would be right around the corner, or in the next room.

I guess what I'm trying to say is the fear of the unknown. I'd rather deal with zombies, because they're material; I understand what they are, have a pretty good idea on how they came to be, and an equally good idea on how to destroy them. This is opposed to facing something that I can never get a good look at, because I don't understand it. As a species, we tend to fear what we don't understand. This is why Lovecraft is my favorite horror writer; he understood that the scariest thing is the thing we can't understand.

 

[Bostur]

Scary stuff needs to stay hidden for as long as possible. We are most afraid when we are unwilling or unable to face the fear. Make the player run from a bogeyman and it becomes scary, give the player a chainsaw to hack away at it and it mostly becomes gross. Thats what Amnesia does so well, by making the player powerless the fear can remain mostly hidden and unconfronted.

Or look at zombies. Zombies out in the open that can be attacked are funny. Zombies that sneak up on you are scary.

Our imagination is much more scary than anything a movie director or game developer can throw at us.

 

[SlaveNumber23]

The sharks in Banjo Kazooie, they scared the crap out of me when I was about 6.

 

[Vicarious Reality]

Noooooo saaaave buuuuttooooon

 

[hoboman29]

For me horror comes from subtlety, like waiting for a monster to pop out but it's not so you get paranoid until even the slightest movement in the background scares you. This method allows for you to imagine the scares which works a lot because you know what scares you most and you will imagine it as the monster you cant see.

Or spiders I hate those things

 

[Lugbzurg]

I just... don't really remember being scared, actually. So, whenever I have the chance, I want to play Amnesia at Midnight, alone in the dark with headphones on, and see what happens to me.

 

[OpticalJunction]

Animals that stare at me without blinking.

 

[Luca72]

I just... don't really remember being scared, actually. So, whenever I have the chance, I want to play Amnesia at Midnight, alone in the dark with headphones on, and see what happens to me.

Some people aren't very affected by it, but I always want to give those people a Voight-Kampff test. I thought I was a badass for staring most "horror" games in the face and not breaking a sweat, but Amnesia made me feel like a scared little kid.

How are Slender and those SCP games by the way? I've only seen clips on Youtube, and the SCP looks frustrating to play because of the random level design, but I can see how that would keep it scary.

Slender looks incredible except for the model they use for the actual slender man.

 

[sanquin]

I don't know what exactly I find scary in games. As with two very similar ones I might find one really scary, yet the other not. Scary games for me have been: Fear 1, Doom 3 and Amnesia.

My experience though, is that a main factor in truly scary gameplay is you as the player, not being able to fight the scary thing. No weapon or anything, and your only option is to run. That is what makes a game much more scary than what a game that gives you a good way to fight the scary thing can get. Though the exception would be games that do give you a weapon, but one that is only barely effective.

I think overall it's a combination of music, atmosphere of the scene, how much you know about the scary thing, and how dangerous the scary thing is for you. (no weapon = VERY DANGEROUS, RUN! )

 

[Voulan]

The simplest touches when it comes to ambiance is what scares me. Big open areas, lots of doors, limited perspective (darkness, small corridors, can't look at enemies, etc) are all perfect means of making anything scarier than usual.

Also spiders.

 

[piinyouri]

My imagination and a dark room.

Some times just my imagination.
Also spiders.
And snakes.
And bees and wasps.
And anything with a stinger.
Actually anything that crawls, slithers, or swarms.

I hate bugs.

 

[Extra-Ordinary]

Not much either way, I'm kind of a puss.
But I'm one of those people who enjoys being scared so it's not so bad.
In particular...
In real life: stinging insects.
In fiction, be it games or what-have-you: Jump-scares, and atmosphere of dread, and/or and enemy that I can't kill but can kill me in one hit.
So yeah, the Bear from Condemned 2: Bloodshot
And now that I've recently played F.E.A.R 2: Project Origin, I've realized that things that flash in and out of view very quickly, like, "Here I am, now I'm nowhere, now I'm *here*, now I'm gone, now I'm HERE!" are things I find quite scary.

 

[Smeggs]

Being alone, or anything creepy.

Alternatively, put me in the room with one of the fuckers and watch me run at warpspeed out of therse.

Another person who's irrationally afraid of fish? I thought I was alone!

Very little scares me in terms of movies, but certain games can do it for me. Amnesia being one great example for that.

I'm irrationally afraid of moths. Yes, moths, the totally harmless little butterfly-like insects. I dunno, the idea of that powder on their wings grosses me out, they're...eesh. Not even as afraid of hornets or spiders as moths. Earwigs are a close second, though.

The obligatory insectoid monstrosity underground swarm level in just about any game that has mutants or aliens makes me a bit uneasy. I hated that level in the new Turok. I hate the underground antlion levels in HL2E2. I hated the fire ant metro tunnel in Fallout 3.

I'm a big pussy when it comes to cheap scares. Just about anything that is meant to scare me in a game will scare me. You'd think someone was killing me with a machete if you heard me when I play Fatal Frame. Perhaps I should make videos of my pussyness while gaming, that seems to be a popular thing to do nowadays, Mack&Mesh and 4PlayerPodcast are pretty well known for it. Shit, the only actual scare in the ENTIRETY of Dark Sector made me jump (where you are in the sewers and the boss monster suddenly comes out of a grate and grabs you). Then again there was not even a single indication that would happen as the rest of the game had been all action-shootery.