Thoughts on Provoking Fear Through Monsters and Phobias

  By now, it has gotten to the stage where we have needed to concern our self's with involving monsters in the game. Provoking fear, being the main purpose of involving monsters, can become a matter involved rather deeply with emotions and phobias.
  Monologophobia (which can refer to repetition/the same) is a phobia that, along with many other phobias, can be integrated quiet well into the game and used in context of the idea of pursuit from the monsters. Monologophobia is a fear that I used specifically in one of the basements as the basement is like a small maze, and all the corners and walls are very similar giving the feeling of being lost and presenting Monologophobia. Then with the idea of having a monster in there with you that could be anywhere, brings out those fears to the surface and the players mind wanders into, most likely, a place where these fears are always nagging at them. If mastered, it can be a perfect circle.
  Another thing that was meditated on was the actual design of the monsters themselves and their influence in the game. The monsters hold the biggest sway in the fear factor in this game, so a lot of time was taken to perfect the monsters and their influence. Their appearance is the most important factor in my opinion; it is what we observe and become confronted by in the monsters the most. So with this in mind the monsters were based on basic child-hood fears eg: the boogeyman, Frankenstein, general monsters etc. Many horror games these days are 'over-doing' (so to speak) the monsters or zombies they involve in their games by taking on the tactic of provoking disgust by making the creatures completely torn, flayed, skinny, half dead, twitchy, and pretty much an over-flayed corpse-thing. There isn't much wrong with that approach but if not used right, it is very short lived and it has also been used up and people are just about used to it. Having a new approach to the look of the monster keeps the fear of the unknown by easing the monsters into the players experience rather than loosing it out in a sudden burst of scare to chase the player and desensitize the payer for the rest of the game and render it not as scary an experience as it could be.
  As the game goes down the long road of development, new concepts and ideas are being surfaced and integrated to make it a suspenseful and fear-filled game as possible.

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