author website: lunarbaboon.com
Odd aside, it’s my test in a horror game to see if I should actually take threats seriously. If you see something creepy- can it kill you? Some games it’s just creepy stuff that can only scare you- but if it can’t hurt you then no big deal and loses all risk and threat.
Amnesia did this really well imo. The first half of Rebirth has no direct threats, but many many things that make you feel uneasy. You won’t know offhand when you’re finally in a “lethal” situation, and it hides its failure states a bit so that you’re never sure if you could have avoided an encounter.
The end result is something very close to the one-chance experience of being a character in a horror movie, complete with unrealistic escapes.
Amnesia is one of my all-time favorite games. F.E.A.R. should have been scary, but all the scary parts were completely non lethal, so I just laughed and ran through them. Layers of Fear was similar in that a lot of the time it was creepy, but not lethal. It’s kinda like checking if friendly fire is on or if fire damages the player. You need to set expectations in games or play with the player’s ideas of what is and is not safe.