Adventure games that have scared you (and ones that probably shouldn't have)
 

When I think back to my gaming past as a very bored child in a seaside town full of retired people, I remember a lot of traumatising moments. It may seem funny now, but at the time the graphics were all state of the art, or pandered to your imagination far more than now, and as a child things seem more 'real'.

So, what games from your childhood scared you or freaked you out? I'll start, maybe we can get some sort of support group going hahaha!

Granny's Garden - So, you're playing an educational game when you're like 5 years old. You have a really active imagination. The primative graphics are pretty disturbing to you, as are the descriptions ... then there's a time limit on something and you're not that good at maths so you fail the question, and then this shows up:

http://www.redkeyreddoor.com/wordpre...g_witchbig.jpg

Arghhhh! Traumatised. It still looks pretty disturbing now, in an abstract way.

Zelda 2 - Okay, this is a silly one. A year or so after I got a NES. When Link dies there's a silouette of Ganon and an (at the time) scary laugh. And it comes from nowhere, in a game that was otherwise pretty tame. I think it scared me so much because of my traumatisation from Granny's Garden.

Shadowgate - Same sort of time. More well written descriptive text. Really creepy music. Really creepy graphics. I should've known better. I've gone into this room, there's slime.. what? I don't know what to do.. i'm dead? Wha? This is scary! Big skeleton! (Death) Traumatised. Again.

Asylum (Atari ST) - Made to play this by a friend at their house as he thinks its so cool. Another text adventure that's well written, and it's about murderers in an insane asylum. Hmm!

Okay, after all that I was reduced to NES games that were by Nintendo that either featured Mario, Mega Man or Kirby. Still, not a bad way to lead your gaming life.

Then..

Maniac Mansion - Not the NES version (that had far less disturbing graphics for the Edisons), the PC version. Left alone with it at a parent's friend's house. Hey, this is cool, nice music intro! These people are funny! Look at their big heads! The writing is funny, i'm enjoying this. Okay, i'm in the house, in the Kitchen.... what the hell is that? Zobie nurse! Arrghh. Run, run! captured! Still played a bit more... these people are coming from nowhere, at random, so I don't know what to do or when to run, so I don't want to even set foot in the mansion. So scary! Wouldn't go down hallways in the dark for ages after that.

Theme Park Adventure - Very disturbing. Only found out today what this was called, another case of being left alone with a disturbing game in an unfamiliar setting (parent's friend's house)

Operation Stealth - What's going on? I've been Disavowed? Creepy animation of being carried off and killed. No-one will know I ever existed?

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Amiga) - Played for hours with no problems... the Nazi bit. Get into a fight, lose it because the sucker punch doesn't work twice. What, Indy's dead? I'm responsible? Hitler takes over the earth? Noooooo. Traumatised. (I really loved Harrison Ford as a kid)

Monkey Island (Amiga) - lalalala this game is really funny, cool, get really far in it, really enjoying it.... aaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh! What the hell is that?? Traumatised. (Can you guess what it was?)

Beneath A Steel Sky - My character can die? Ay any time? Freaky graphics too. I want to play.. but... he could get killed at any time.

Darkseed (Amiga) Demo version. Played any demo going. Okay, I'm some man and i'm walking around. Creepy music. Getting louder, what am I meant to be doing? An alien is coming out of his head! Argh!

Indiana Jones & the Fate of Atlantis - Indy, dead? Nooooooo

The Dig - That bit where you can ressurrect someone you shouldn't, and I did. You know the bit. For some reason it really chilled me.

7th Guest - Full stop.

Alone in the Dark - Should have known by the title. The zombie coming up through the hatch at the beginning. Okay, I was about 14 by now, but those zombies are pretty disturbing even though they're not traditionally scary. Foolish enough to persevere, then go downstairs and the entire room full of sitting zombies.

Some sierra adcenture , set in the middle ages, i'm sure it's part of a long series. Do this. Dead. Do that. dead. Do somethigng else. Dead. Maybe not scary, but very disconcerting.

So the theme of what made me scared? Games with time limits in which you had to do something or get killed or captured, at any time, at a random interval. Mostly games that really immersed you, either in their writing (I get lost in books) or graphics, and THEN did that. It probably all stems from Granny's Garden. Never thought about that until today!

A lot of my favorite games were so good because they did creep me out. My favorite game of all-time is The Temple of Apshai. There have been versions after the one I played, but the one I remember was on the Commodore 64.

It used the C64s ability to make small little pixelated graphics Apples couldn't make which were pretty good for the technology at the time. You could see individual ribs on the skeletons.

Anyway, the experience was...it took about 25 minutes to load through the casette deck. So you popped in the tape, left and waited to hear the familiar sound of a gong being hit with a weird wind flute like sound. This meant the games was loaded and you were buying equipment from the dwarf.

Then, you'd enter the dungeon...and when monsters would appear, would make a sound that I remember to this day, this strange otherworld alarm that would turn into a sound not unlike the Jaws theme, that would play as they got closer and closer to your character (if you killed the monster, a triumphant little sound would play)...

Playing this game in the dark, especially if my parents weren't home, would put me on the edge of my seat with fear.

That being said, Doom II creeped me completely out in the later stages with the miscellaneous pieces of flesh and Amber: Journeys Beyond definitely was a game late at night would have me looking around.

I don't have huge experience with adventure games, if anyone knows of any games that truly freak you out, and can compare to a Lucio Fulci or Dario Argento film, please post them. I'd love to play them.

It's all about the old-school games. There's something inherently disturbing about the sparce black backgrounded graphics, the electronic noises and music and the disturbing monsters that don't look quite right hehe
Also, a lot of them relyed on clever writing to scare you.

"Kneeling down next to the fountain, you drink a
handful of the acidic water. You can't scream because
you no longer have a throat, let alone a larnyx!!"

How scary and harsh is that? hehe

try Shadowgate on the NES, in the dark, late at night, with headphones. (use an emulator) It's an ancient game but you will get creeped out at least once. (Yes, I went back later and confronted my fear of that game)


Oh and the bit in Monkey Island? Here's the answer http://www.worldofmi.com/imageviewer.php?id=19 and it moves "Aww, he likes you!" ;)

Remember that ominous dead guy in the desert of King's Quest VII?

"You... are... far... away... from... life. And love... And... hope..."

Yeah, THAT guy. He gave me a dramatic case of the heebs like you wouldn't believe.

I'm pretty sure I've shared this before, but whatever: When I played Last Crusade as a kid, I unknowingly had the volume turned up to pretty much maximum at the part where you get a closeup of the knight's shield accompanied by the loud zing. Gave me a decent jolt.

Yes, I think the sierra game in my list was a King's Quest game. It definitely had voice acting so that rules out some of them.

Shivers. While the stupid spirits Ixupi looked really lame, the atmosphere, the shadows and the soundtrack really got me. Spooky.

beatchef, that Granny's Garden screenshot sent chills up my spine! I used to have it on the trusty BBC B+. It stressed the hell out of me, always worrying that the witch could appear out of nowhere at almost any moment.

The only other adventure game I can think of that freaked me out was Castle Quest, also on the BBC.

http://www.bbcmicrogames.com/screens...tle-quest1.gif

Couldn't find the right screenies, but the bits I remember shaking me up were the spider dropping on you, and the troll chasing you over the bridge. Eek!

Ooooh I remember Asylum, played it on my C64. That title screen guy was pretty creepy, and so were some of the unexpected deaths... like when you meet the guy holding the sign that reads "Look Up" ( don't ), or the rocket pack incident.

"In Asylum you play an adventure gamer who has gone a bit over the top. You have trouble distinguishing the real world from your adventures, and thus you have been locked in the Asylum."

http://62.168.142.47/~lemon/games/sc.../asylum_01.gif

C64, BBC, ZX Spectrum... the fact that we be quoting this ancient hardware is the scary part... heh.

Lighthouse. When

Spoiler:

the monster jumped at me when I opened that one door

, I screamed. The really pathetic thing is that, the next time I played the game, and it happened again, I screamed AGAIN.

Tex Murphy: Pandora Directive - I was practically shaking when the alien was chasing me in Area 51.

Oh man, Asylum! That brings back many memories. I don't think we ever got more than halfway through it, but my best friend and I started from scratch at least 100 times. I remember trying to map the damn thing (which is designed to be impossible) and getting tied in knots. I ruined a lot of pencils. What a classic!

Zork Nemesis was my first really scary game. Others that had me jump out of my seat were Dark Fall, Last Half of Darkness and Delaware St. John 1 and 2. I also remember being spooked when Saavedro appeared in the window in Myst Exile. I'm presently playing Barrow Hill, and it has some good bits in it so far.

Going further back, I could also mention "Castle Master" on the Amiga.
There was just something terribly unsettling and... wrong about that game. Scared the crapola out of me when I was a little girl.

Hah, I had the same problem, Shivers really scared me when I was younger.
But there is a very good reason for that, namely my brother.

Back in the good old days me and my brother would play every Lucasarts and Sierra adventuregame together. Spending afternoons figuring out what to do next was loads of fun.

Whilst playing Shivers, however, we were stuck very early on in the game (near the gear puzzle... yeah really early on - we weren't even inside the museum, and when I played the game a few years later I solved the puzzle in one go)
After having tried to solve it for three days in a row with no succes, on the night of the fourth day I gave up and went to bed - my brother continued to try and solve the puzzle.

He managed to solve the puzzle and enter the underground entrance to the museum and play the entire way into the entrance hall of the museum. He was of coarse all too eager to show me what had happened from the gazebo with the gear puzzle up and until entering the museum.

(If you haven't played the game you probably won't understand what happens next)

We enter the underground passageway (which was very dark) I was about 7 or 8 years olf when we played it but I was used to scary games so the dark did not really upset me. We continue and eventually open a heavy door, bats fly out: a cliché but it does evoke a slight scream (nothing too bad)

We continue on to the boat and cross the underground river where the first (unavoidable) Ixupi sucks away some of our lifeforce. Now unknown to me my brother had cranked up the volume of the PC all the way to the top, so the Ixupi flashed up on screen with this huge piercing nerve-shattering scream.
I - naturally - begin to scream as well, but I manage to get a grip of myself. I shout at my brother and tell him to turn the volume back to normal, which he does (or so I tought).

We arrive on the other bank of the river and exit the boat where we find a corpse (Professor Windlenot) and if you've played the game you know what happens next: the ghost of Windlenot streams out of the body upon approaching it with a loud and ghastly ghostly moan, followed by a booming echoed voice. With the volume all the way to the top I simply cracked, I screamed and ran down the stairs where I continued to scream (to the great amusement of my brother)

Thanks for reminding me! I'm going to remind my brother of this when he returns next week... and perhaps I shall install Shivers again.

If you look up shivers on mobygames the screenshots archive has quite a few screenshots from the first part of the game (the gearbox puzzle, the river ixupi and Windlenot's ghost.


Another memorable part in Shivers is when listening to Windelnot's taperecorder, which manages to be funny as well as scary at the same time.

The things is Is till don't know if Shivers was supposed to be scary. I guess so, since they had all those burned corpses about.

I loved the fact that - after finishing the game - you could explore the museum again without having to solve the puzzles or being afraid of an ixupi hiding in one of the exhibits. At that point the game became an interactive museum of the strange and unusual ("welcome, welcome to Professor Windlenot's museum of the strange and unusual...")

Temple of Apshai...wow, does THAT bring back memories, seeing it mentioned here! Whenever those creatures jumped out at me, my heart began beating faster, lol.

My sister and I were freaked out by Friday the 13th on the Nintendo...it was weird, trying to explore the camp, only to have Jason slide into view, and chase you down!

Puzzle of Flesh (Phantasmagoria 2) was another one...the way Curtis kept hallucinating at work was pretty freaky...especially the thing at his computer monitor...that made me jump so hard, I nearly fell out of my chair.

Oh, and Shivers is the game I replay every Halloween...love how it uses atmospheric music and imagery instead of gore to really be freaky....

The Colonel's Bequest.. the only Sierra game where the dozens of random ways to die really added to the atmosphere. A shadowy figure in the hat, hiding at different times around the house.. the first time you run into him (her?), it startles you, but subsequently when replaying the game you have to go back to the same spot, just to see if he's there.. hiding in the upstairs closet, ready to pull you inside.. or behind the boxes in the attic.. or in the shadows of a secret passage, leaping out to strangle you if you get too near.. and of course the shower scene (homage to Psycho).

The ghost is the graveyard adds great atmosphere (I always hoped there was a puzzle to be solved with the ghost, but I guess not), and I've always found the background sound outdoors extremely unnerving -- the uncanny sound of an Adlib card's crude simulation of masses of locusts, crickets, frogs, and god knows what else in the night.

The absolute creepiest scene is when (or rather IF, since so much of the exploration in this game was optional) you explore the basement toward the end.. in the dim light you can vaguely discern a mass in the far corner of the room, and as you walk closer your lantern lights it more and more fully until you see that it's a pile of bodies, dumped down the laundry chute.

Haunted House for Atari 2600. Man, that game creeped me out. The box art was pretty scary, too. Of course I was like 6 when I played it...

http://www.mr-atari.com/afbeeldingen...unteshouse.jpg

Oh god, yes. When Tex stops and says "The hairs on the back of my neck are standing on end..." Eeeeek! I stopped playing for a couple days before I had the guts to go back. Other games that scared me:

Manhunter 2 - These games were creepy, but the second one was the worst for it. Early on in the game, you follow one character into a tunnel, just to find him at the end dead, and mutated, with "Me be man again someday" scratched into the wall beside his body. Eeeek! Also, later in the game, I found a monsters lair, which was empty. However a few minutes later, when I returned to the lair again, he was waiting for me. Very unexpected, very freaky.

Also a lot of the primarly static graphic adventures were freaky too. Shadowgate, with the woman in the closet... Time Quest with the dancing native... All very freaky.

There's this one scene in GK3 that spooked me - when one of the hotel guests disappeared during the middle of the night, Gabe sneaked into his bedroom to find out what had happened. You'll noticed that the windows were wide open and Gabe noted how it was relevent. Urgh, those open windows really creeped me out. Plus two weeks later, my neighbour's house was robbed and the robbers had left the windows wide open...

The second chapter in Sanitarium sticks out to me as being one of the scariest moments in adventure gaming...not so much in the "Boo!" way, but way it is just overall disturbing.

And then there was that maze in the 7th Guest that would play scary music, with Stauf taunting you afterward, whenever you ran into a dead end...that used to really make me tense.

And yea, I didn't like that weird looking giant blob that just kinda materialized outta nowhere and jump on you all during the final palace of Zelda II.

--BPF

Puzzle of Flesh was okay, but not nearly as good as the first Phantasmagoria.
Even at the very beginning of the game (when you know nothing about the house or what is going to happen) going down into the cellar managed to creep me out.

Another haunting scene is watching the mutoscope of Carnovasch's last performance.

I notice that a lot of people quote Uninvited as a game that really scared them as a kid, especially this bit http://uninvited.ytmnd.com/

Dark Fall x100,000 ... that game gives me the wimpering willies just THINKING about it.

Arrrrrrrrrrrgh! *brings back traumatic memories*
To be honest though, I was petrified from the beginning of Uninvited, especially when you were confronted with a cliché horror scenario about a car breaking down in the middle of nowhere and the only building in sight is a creepy, probably haunted and most definitely dangerous looking mansion!
*Hmmm, I know, I’ll go in!*
*walks through the unlocked door to be confronted by a killer ginger skeleton, and the only thing to defend yourself with is a pendent!*

I should have expected from the title ‘Uninvited’ really...

I have to agree with beatchef though; there is something about older games which makes them seem scarier than their modern counterparts. Even the games that aren’t purposely supposed to insight fear in you! It is probably the basic, less realistic graphics and the screeching synthesizer music. Now I know what hell must be like. The Devil must be in 8 bit!

I used to be frightened of ‘Lure of the Temptress,’ largely because of the box art.
http://www.internetstyling.com/fruit...eTemptress.jpg

I found ‘Aztec’ quite scary, partly due to the chilling sight of indistinguishable 3D male figures in loin cloths, but moreover, I hate being chased, and for large parts of that game you were being chased by indistinguishable 3D male figures in loin cloths with sharp objects!
(That was a bit of a mouthful)

Although it is a platform game, Barbarian II was another game which seemingly struck fear in me as a child. I think that it was mainly due to the opening sequence where a giant eagle tears off the roof of a house and snatches a sleeping baby (later to be bestowed with the pleasant title of ‘barbarian’). For a few weeks after I was frightened to go upstairs in case the eagle returned for me!

Now that I think about it, I found most Psygnosis games quite scary!

But the granddaddy of them all has to be ‘I Have No Mouth and I must Scream,’ I have to drum up the courage, even to this day, to put the floppy disk into the drive! There’s something about being at the mercy of an evil omniscient supercomputer which leaves you feeling nauseous. And the original story wasn’t even that scary…

Yes, that wasn't funny. Brrrr....

I don't like horror at all, I can't stand watching people being hurt, so I quit Phantasmagoria a bit after I let the ghost loose in the house. Buying that game was a mistake.

The 7th Guest had me spooked more than a couple times. I don't think I beat it.

There were many moments in King's Quest VII that disturbed me, too. Like that scorpion you have to get by or the boogeyman jumping on you all the time in Ooga Booga (I was so relieved when I could disguise myself and avoid him). Or the many ways you can die in the cemetery or those bones that would grab you. Or that nightmare monster... or the swamp... Ok, I had a lot of moments that creeped me out in King's Quest VII. I was like 13. XD

Yeah he spooked me, too. (I also think he looks like Zelgadis from the Slayers!) Couldn't he also kill you somehow? :crazy:

Shivers 2 scared me very much... The uncanny mood & the somber ambience and not knowing what awaits you in the darkness....in the caves...

?!! You don't like horror but you buy Phantasmagoria ?! :D You didn't read the description of the game ?!?

Guess you didn't see what happened when

Don gets hold of Adrienne ?
Or
When the big bad demon catch hold of Adrienne ?

:devil: :devil: :devil:

Scratches really frightened me. I enjoyed it, but I'm not sure if I want to play it a second time. Just thinking about it gives me nightmares. Then I could mention a few freewares. 7 Days a Skeptic scared me enough that I couldn't finish it. Trilby's Notes really creeped me out too, but I wasn't afraid of 5 Days a Stranger as much.

OMG, I thought no one else shared my fear of Zelda 2! I wasnt' necessarily scared of the ghost that came up, but I did find the entire game to be reeeally creepy. Granted, I was in like, the 2nd grade at the time, but the game as a whole just had a really eerie quality about it, like it was the definition of limbo or something. I dunno, the whole map had this really post-apocalyptic feel and sometimes you were fighting yourself which is straight out of an Edgar Allan Poe story (William Wallace, I think?).

i was scared of dr fred's voice in DOTT, and i tried to finish the game without talking to him.
Eventually: i FACED MY FEARS!!

I scare easily and that's why I almost never watch scary movies. But I love scary games, or at least games that are scary to me. ;) I really haven't got a clue to why I love to get scared in front of a computer but not in front of a TV.
Scratches and Barrow Hill scared me quite a bit. Dark Fall The Journal as well.

King's Quest 6, the whole land of the dead segment freaked me out.

I'm sure there are tons of games that scared me when I was a kid .. not too many adventure games as far as I can remember .. but I remember Doom and Duke Nukem 3D was really scary for me. The moaning .. and the pigs with the red eyes through the dark really scared the shit out of me!..

I always thought Dune II was scary, too. The fog of war .. man, you could never guess what was going to come .. if it would be one of those huge, nasty worms of a batallion of the enemy! :D

Grannys Garden really got me when i was about 9 or 10. I wonder if teachers knew what an effect that game could have because it was meant for kids. The updated version looks cute and more suitable.

The Last Half of Darkness got me aswell, playing that in the dark many years ago. A DOS game agreed but very atmospheric.

I remember when I first died in Riven, which was early on after opening that one book, I was shocked. Like I was seriously shocked. I had no idea you could die in Riven and it completely changed the outlook of the game for me. Knowing that I could die in the game made it a lot more overwhelming and freakier. It didn't help at all when I ran into the little ghost girl a little bit after this discovery. Damn, I had chills running through my body the rest of the playthrough.

Um... My memory might be a bit vague, but I think the hidden treasure subplot is connected to the ghost?

.....

:shifty:

Gabriel Knight 3 was scary, the night bits especially and the bits in Montreaux's house. Especially the attic.

Thus endeth my short reply.

The witch is truly terrifying, but what kind of threat is that?

"Now I've got you! I will send you home at once."

I can live with that.

If there are any prospective kidnappers out there; that's not a threat that works.