Things that would have made Amnesia scarier

[flcn27]

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.

I agree. There's also a chance that after a while you'll learn when to expect these scary moments. We don't need Amnesia to become like FEAR/Dead Space. Amnesia is scary all the time.

[NPerrin]

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

I agree. There's also a chance that after a while you'll learn when to expect these scary moments.

I don't know about you guys, but I had these exact feelings about Amnesia(the scene where the monster just disappears in front of you early on in the game, the monster appearing when you finish everything in the morgue, the fleshy growths appearing after an area's puzzles are solved, the many canned chase scenes...very obviously constructed). It didn't matter too much because it was still very scary, so I think that lots of these scripted ideas would still work out great. As far as learning when to expect them, by the end of the game I was feeling that I really had figured the monsters out and they weren't nearly as scary or threatening as before. Many times the classic gameplay trap "do something important, cue enemies" happened, too.

[H3llshock]

"Things that would have made Amnesia scarier"

A dude outside your window watching you play.

...What? It's true.

Hahahaha very true

[xiao]

http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-4679.html

I had some pretty good suggestions here, I think....

[Crabski]

OH MAN, I've been waiting for this thread for a while. I've had this idea brewing for awhile in the back of my mind.

Imagine: You're in the 'morgue' part of the game. You're getting done extracting the antidote from the dead guy on the table. You've just heard a noise and you know a monster is near. You lock yourself in one of the rooms filled with dead bodies, and cower in the corner hoping it will go away. You avert your eyes from the lifeless pile of bodies... looking at them just makes you deeply uncomfortable. After 10-15 seconds of sitting in the corner waiting for the monster to leave, a slow noise like someone breathing out loudly catches your attention. You turn back to the pile and notice that one of them, the man on the top of the pile, is missing. Just then, you look up to the opposite corner of the room and see the dead man standing there, staring at you... breathing out slowly. After about 5 seconds of absolute terror, your vision tweaks and the man is back where he was, dead and lifeless on top of the pile. This would only happen if your sanity was low.

I'm going to give myself nightmares...

EDIT: Bottle Dog suggested having hallways and rooms change as you're walking through them, and I can't agree more. This was one of my favorite moments from Black Plague, and I'd love to see it return some day.

[soybostero93]

Hi everybody!

There are two particular suggestions I love:

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.

That would be terrifying. Not only the task of picking up something right next to a monster, but the nerve-wra[/quote]cking moment where you try to clear the way while the thing tries to clear itself from its chains...

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.

Another very well-thought scare.

Now, on with my two cents:

Maybe, one of the first monster encounters would involve a gust of wind blowing open a door and blowing out a lamp. Immediately, the player starts hearing growls and grunts, and soon a monstrosity emerges.

The player comes against a door that opens inwards. He/she tries to open it, but something's blocking the frame. The player starts hearing growls. He/she closes it hastily and runs away while the monster tries to blow the door open.

In a dark hall, the players sees a monster, which briefly looks at him/her and runs away. Growling sounds are being heard. When the player approaches the place the monster was, the thing comes back and attacks him/her.

The player is walking down a lit corridor when a door that seemed locked seconds ago starts opening. The player turns around and sees the shadow of a monster in the wall. Immediately, the door is slammed shut.

Maybe, Frictional Games could reuse the little scare at the beginning of Black Plague, when Philip saw a humanoid run past a door.

[ving]

seriously, I am only playing the demo at the mo... (I will get the fully vers when demo is finished).... just talking about this game sends shivers down my spine. it scares the crap outta me.

I dont feel qualified to enter sugestions till i have played it thru.

[Aphotic]

* Although the torture scenes were very scary to listen to, i think it would have added to the atmosphere if you actualy experienced some of them. Not all, just some.

Oh yes, let's please watch the Cradle in action. /vomit

The game itself was incredibly scary, definitely scared me more than any movie I've watched. I think the largest contributor to this were the atmospheric constants. I actually had a nightmare last night that included that very low "zombie groan" ambient sound that you can hear in several parts.

Several things that would have made it scarier, and sorry if they've been mentioned, I only browsed through the posts:

1. Make the darkness...dark. More often than not I found the darkness itself as more of an inconvenience than a fright factor, especially with how quickly your vision adjusts. I don't know about you guys, but in my pitch black room at night, it takes at LEAST a few minutes for my eyes to substantially adjust, and even then, it's difficult to see. As was mentioned before, it was too easy ending the game with excess of stuff. The darkness itself also needs to be worked on in the way it affects the player. I found it really immersion-breaking when I was in relatively lit areas but my sanity was on edge, but on the flip side in dark areas with just a puny candle, looking out into infinite blackness, my sanity was not even slightly affected.

2. That leads me to number two, sanity. I like how sanity affected how disoriented you became and your vision itself, as well as the bugs crawling across your screen. But, for as scary as the game was, there was always this hunger for the game to drive me absolutely bonkers. In my opinion there was plenty of room for many stronger hallucinations and very scary sequences. To whoever said that curtains reaching out with arms would break the realism, a hallucination is a hallucination. And regardless of how realistic a curtain reaching with arms would be, we, as the player, would not be able to know whether Daniel was hallucinating or not, and whether there was a real threat involved. What provided the scares wasn't the level of realism, but the inability to tell what was "real" in terms of what Daniel was experience, and what wasn't.

3. Traps, and fewer save points. There should have been more points in the game where you could have irreversibly trapped yourself, or where there were real threats lurking. True, the game did scare me witless, but in retrospect, much of what I experienced through Daniel was mostly harmless. And the repercussions for 'dying' should have been much steeper. This could have been done with save points far and few between, OR making it so that you don't truly die, but wake with minimal health and minimal sanity.

[Childerich]

I think it's a pity that all monster encounters are trigger-based. Sure, you're not aware of that the first time you complete the game, but it greatly reduces Amnesia's replay value.

I also feel that the monsters should be a little more persistent in their search. I once hid from a Grunt in a cell in Prison. I was pretty sure it hadn't seen me, so I was shocked when it started to break down the door. Daniel's sanity was low, a small candle was lit and there was absolutely nothing to hide behind. However, when the door was finally down, all the Grunt did was growl a few times ... and leave without even entering. I was quite relieved, of course, but in retrospect, it was a bit of a mood breaker.

[alaskahorrorfan]

I loved (ie freaked me out) the painting of Alexander that changed. I find that when inanimate objects change in ways they are not supposed to I find in very unsettling...kinda like the "rules of world my mind set" are no longer being followed.