What would you like to see from Frictional next?

[CHANCEPHOENIX]

IMO the scariest stuff are the things you never see, ideas that take over your brain. Compared to that, howling and disfigured monsters are comedy...especially if overused. Superficially all is normal, but the mind is disintegrating...something very very wrong in details, maybe that could be a part of the recipe.

I agree with this. As for the monster stuff : Even the most generic monster imaginable can be made scary enough by making you go ape-**it over its implied presence and by a few sparse, but unexpected (I mean really unexpected) appearances.

IMHO, the best game to mercilessly play with classic horror themes was the Russian blink-and-you'll-miss-it survival horror Pathologic. No monsters or clear supernatural phenomenna to be seen, but the atmosphere was dense. Grimly realistic and surreal at the same time. It evoked a general feel of both material, societal and mental decay and... dread. I'd compare it with the great 2001 horror movie, The Others (starring Nicole Kidman). By the end of Pathologic, you felt similarly like in Penumbra : Reality and nightmares blended into one and you couldn't tell the difference. And the best thing was, that Patho's devs achieved this finale without resorting to cheap scares, monsters, whispers in the dark... or even darkness for that matter... It wasn't used once. Still, the whole mysterious town you explored in the game's story went gradually more and more unsettling.

Also, a great horror game would be one that was set in a sort of bizzaro world : Where people are fine at night, where the nights, evenings, and total darkness are calm, serene, even beatiful... but once the sun rises, everything starts to turn mysterious, horrific and uncertain. All creepy things happen in broad daylight (especially on nice sunny noons) and where you would expect them the least. Nightfall and grim rainy weather would be the only allies of your sanity.

Pathologic ?

I still have it somewhere on an external hard-drive ...

Gonna try it on my laptop.

thanx for the reminder.