How do you feel during a chase?

[Diz]

Too many people just listens to the music and waits until it ends (music stops -> there's no monsters).

As far as I am concerned, sometimes the music would keep playing until the player investigated themselves. However, perhaps this only went on for so long, as well. If this is a problem, we need a mechanism that simulates the way of thinking and perception.

If a monster approaches, have its theme play in the background. If/when it decides to go elsewhere (or technically despawn), leave the music on until you investigate some more, having it fade away slowly once you have experienced it yourself and are aware that the monster is nowhere in the immediate near, and go back to the area's creepy atmosphere soundtrack.

You can make it so that after a period of no encounters, hearing the monster in the distance will not start any monster track, but you lightly picking up on it, and once you definitely can hear it good and clear, have the music start.

My point is to remove predictability and analysis of the monster soundtrack system and rather configure it as much as possible according to what the player and character is picking up and should be thinking and feeling. Is the monster still out there? Who knows? Keep the track playing until you find out then, perhaps. Either that or make up a system where monsters do not simply up and vanish and that the music goes away when you can no longer actually hear them, then reappear when you do hear them again.

The reason for my paragraphs is that the soundtrack does potentially make the game scarier, if anything. Music will impose feelings and terror if done right, something Mikko Tarmia (and I am more than confident the composer of A Machine For Pigs will too) pull of extremely well. Of course, if you play custom stories and the like, the soundtrack may not play as important a role and may more serve as tool for analysis and all of that, but I am mostly refering to one's first playthrough of The Dark Descent here. For most players, music will enhance emotion and terror. If the problem is that players use it too much to their advantage, it is better to come up with a system that better implements it and makes it behave less to an advantage, even if that might be very hard to implement, as I still feel removing monster tracks would have potential intensified atmosphere and additional horror go to waste. =)