Things that would have made Amnesia scarier

[Sexbad]

Motion-control (WII , PS3move, xbox360-kinect).

yada yada yada TERRIBLE IDEA

[Bottle Dog]

More enemies like others had said

When sanity is very low: rooms will start to change in dramatic ways. Like You exit a room only to find that you are entering the same room. walk down a long hallway only to see that you have only walked a few feet from where you were. lanturn becomes a severed head. see bright blue light coming out of some doors. Hear monsters right next to you even if there isn't any.

In the study room have a dead mutilated dog come crashing in the window from the outside. (Lol watchmen)

Hear knocking sounds on doors with low sanity

In the sewers have a giant wall of water come rushing at the player while he's walking to a small hall/walkway when he has very low sanity. but when the wave is about to hit the player make it disappear.

Have a fire start and spread in a random area. when you touch it it disappears

Have something giant crawl out of one of those doorways that have those boulders and cobwebs things that breathe. But do it late in the game when the player thinks that they are nothing.

See giant spiders crawling on the floor like the one in penumbra when sanity is low. like before, touch them and they disappear.

In a silent dark area have a guy on fire run past a doorway while screaming in pain.

When sanity is very low see a pedastool down a hallway with an orb in it glowing blue. as the player moves closer everything becomes darker and quieter. when you touch it everything goes back to normal

[flcn27]

@Bottle Dog
I like all those ideas but when is your sanity ever low? Only when you're hiding from a monster.
So they also need to balance the amount of tinderboxes/oil for your lantern a bit (I had 40 tinderboxes and 8x oil for lantern after the prison) and maybe make Daniel freak out a bit more often.

[davva]

(I had 40 tinderboxes and 8x oil for lantern after the prison)

how is that possible :S :O

throughout the whole game i was struggeling ALL the time with lampoil, it just baffels me how you could have so many tinderboxes and oils (after the scariest part in the game)

[flcn27]

(I had 40 tinderboxes and 8x oil for lantern after the prison)

how is that possible :S :O

throughout the whole game i was struggeling ALL the time with lampoil, it just baffels me how you could have so many tinderboxes and oils (after the scariest part in the game)

I never used them I only used the lantern every now and then.
In the beginning of the game, I searched for torches/candles all the time and immediately activated them when I entered a new room. But I quickly learned that it's easy to move from light source to light source (some of them are already lit) and only use the lantern if I really need light (usually to search for something).

[SeanzBeanz]

I really like the whole moving through a corridor only to find you've barely moved at all. Or walking from one room into the same room. Really good ideas. Would be nice to see some of these feature in Frictionals next release. Although it's fun, it may be best not to try and think of all the ways we can make Amnesia scarier, before long we would have thought of all the ideas and this will only make Frictionals job harder to scare us lol.

[NPerrin]

Natural, I am convinced you know your horror. Just about all your suggestions really resonated with me.

- A greater element of monster randomness so people can't spoil it for themselves with walkthroughs or let's plays.

This is key. Even on my first playthrough, it became predictable when the monsters would disappear.

- You enter a room with a monster in restraints and are forced to pick up an item right next to it. The room suddenly caves in and you must clear debris from the door just as the monster is working to free itself.

THIS would be amazing. It's grunting and struggling to break its shackles while shaking uncontrollably and you're clearing the way... like a chase scene that the game has plenty of, but more original.

- Like beanz mentioned, they could have punished us a little more with some intense side effects and hallucinations from sanity loss.

I think the amount they did it is just fine, considering 2 things: #1 - You don't start hallucinating tons of stuff just from being afraid of the dark, it would seem unnatural. #2 - lots of people are irritated by the sanity effects mechanic, so to overdo it would put lots of people off and might break immersion for others.

- Lights go out, flicker for a second so you can see a monster close to you, then darkness.

Make this even better by being in a small room that is very well-lit; upon entering it, lights go out, door slams, and is locked. Pitch black darkness. Lights flicker on for a brief moment, during which the room is FILLED with monsters. They're everywhere and staring at you. That would make me SCREAM if it happened. Then the lights start to glow again and the door slowly creaks open.

- Creative use of mirrors.

Mirrors can be really frightening, even in real life. Ever tried to look at one in the darkness in your own room? I'm surprised this wasn't used. Perhaps it's too cliched to use the old "look at the mirror, something's there, turn around, now it's not."

For my OWN suggestion, I think that something could be done about the lamp oil and tinderbox issue. I had a little bit of extra lamp oil (though not much) by the end of the game, but tinderboxes? I had over 50 I believe. I think the feeling of descending deeper into the castle was ruined by the constant little slits that gave way to the outdoors - I told myself many times (especially before using the elevator that lead to the prison) "This is the last time I'll see daylight.... Oh god, this is going to get so much worse (better)..."

It was nice to have those little bits of light to cling on to for hope, but the despair near the end of the game could have been increased by getting rid of these. And then I might have used more tinderboxes. The problem was, the tinderboxes essentially became useless - when you are trying to constantly progress, what's the point of lighting so many torches? You never stay close to a torch long enough for it to be useful, except in a few situations where I found tinderboxes appropriate.

In any case my pants were still scared off me.

EDIT: New thing I discovered. Seems there were enough folks that managed to get on top of the monsters' heads in this game, where they could not be killed. This probably destroyed the immersion and any threatening feeling the monsters had (like in Penumbra, just stand on a crate and you can beat all the dogs to death easily without getting hurt). Just fix bugs like this next time

[flcn27]

@NPerrin,
Well, regarding those bugs, you'll only find out if you deliberately try to lure the monsters to your position and jump on objects. That's not how you should play this game, because if you immerse yourself you would never do something like that . A game always has bugs/glitches but most of the time you'll only find them when you try to explore the game's boundaries.
I like most of these ideas though. Especially your idea about tinderboxes and daylight. I had almost 50 tinderboxes by the end of the game and wondered why I used them so much in the first 30 minutes of the game . The lantern was all I needed.

[hollowleviathan]

"Things that would have made Amnesia scarier"

A dude outside your window watching you play.

...What? It's true.

[PvtLastClass]

While the immediate moments a lot of people are suggesting would in fact be pretty freaky, they have one main problem; they are too "designed". 5 seconds after the player finishes that moment, it would be pretty obvious to them that that was a very deliberate and constructed attempt to scare them, remind them that what they're playing is just a video game by a bunch of designers, and settle themselves back into playing.

I know I won't defend it too often in games, but what made Amnesia scary pretty often was realism. Making the experience feel somewhat real - like something that could actually happen to you - makes it all the more scary. Arms coming from curtains? Scripted sequences? They don't quite do it. I want it to seem like a monster was just wandering around as his stupid self, and happened to find me. Obvious teleportation and smartly sneaking up on me would just sort of ruin that experience.