Moments in video games that scared you

[LanaAndCo]

We all got moments where we got scared, creeped out or uncomfortable while playing a video game. Not just horror games (I mean, that's their job ) but also any games. Even the most family friendly ones can hold a few surprises, maybe that wasn't even their intention or maybe they started normally and suddenly got spooky without warning. Well this it what this thread is for, to share those scary moments!

I'm starting with one of the earliest I can remember. I'm gonna talk about Forestia. Now, I'm not the only one to have been a victim of this game, in fact, if you were an European kid that grew up in the 90s/2000s who played a lot of edutainment PC games (like me), you certainly know what I'm talking about. So, what is Forestia?
Forestia is a French Myst-like (first person point n' click) where you walk around in a magic forest with talking animals and trees and other fantastic creatures. You play games and solve mysteries and can collect plants and take pictures of animals to learn about them. There is also a day/night cycle. In short, it just seems like a perfectly harmless little game but, as you might have suspected by now, there is something dark behind all that. This game is cursed and I'm not only speaking about the 3D that has badly aged a bit. Some of the missions you are assigned to have a creepy atmosphere, like the mermaid one or the sneaking in the anthill one. But if you want to discover all of that by yourself, go play it, it's abandonware (but you'll need an old OS or a virtual machine for it to work correctly). Now, there's a particular moment that those of you who already played know full well what I'm referring to :

Spoiler

https://youtu.be/qb50xzsI0rY?t=2031
So everything start up fine, you going to sleep with your friend Sam at the top of the watch tower. And then... when you wake up, you're all alone, lost, everything is covered in thick red mist and there's a constant ominous choir. Most animals you come across are dead... I know this sounds like a creepypasta but, it's real. To make things worse, there are jumpscares and creepy warping textures if you take a good look at some spots. This is why I often tell people to play this game, just to see them go "What the hell? This is a kids game?!".   Oh and, there is also a bad ending to this level where you accidentally doom the forest and you die by taking a huge blazing rock in the face.

The impact this moment had on 5 years old me was strong enough for me to not touch Forestia again (and Myst too, because I though they were the same game ) for quite some time. But, I still love this game very much and it's one of my favourite from my childhood despite that. Daddyoak and Little Birch are very nice and probably the reason why I like trees that much. Not only that but it is a tradition to play it every evening of the summer solstice, because "Ce soiiir c'est la fête! La fête de la musique!".

[WillLem]

That's super creepy! I've never heard of this game before, but I can see why it would have left such a strong impression.

Often it's those things that disturb us ever so slightly, rather than outright scaring the bejesus out of us, that leave the most lasting impression; we keep going back to see if it will have the same effect, or to investigate what it is that made us feel that way.

I can't think of a video game moment off the top of my head, but for me, a similar kind of memory would have to be the John Tenniel illustrations from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. They're so creepy and mysterious, as a kid I would just hover on those pages and stare at the drawings, taking in every detail. The one where her neck has stretched because she's just eaten the cake which makes her grow massive is particularly striking:

Spoiler

Interesting topic!

[607]

Ah yes, I've looked into Forestia before! (I wrote 'Forestidia' by accident, oops ) I've never played it, though.
I had one scary game as a kid. It was called "Red Cat Spookkasteel", and was only released in the Netherlands, as far as I know. I didn't dare to go past the second level, but I wanted to know how the story continued; I went into the game's files and listened to all the cutscenes. I was a tech-savvy kid.
I'm not sure if I've got scared by any other video games! I'll think about it.

[mobius]

I think this one speaks for itself...

https://youtu.be/D30r0iRH73Q?t=2737

in a recent example; how about in Breath of the Wild the dark forest area? [Typhlo ruins]

[Pieuw]

Ah yes, Myst has an eerie atmosphere and some moments can be spooky

As a kid I was terrified by a level in Lands of Lore 2 : The Dark Halls
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kUvoZ0hOdAM&t=1m40s
The flickering lights, the strange music and creepy voices, the glowing blue ghosts... It's an optional area but the thing is, once you enter you can't leave without clearing it! As I saved my game as soon as I got in and was too scared to make progress, I stopped playing for a long while

[607]

Oh! I just remembered.
See, I'm not into these types of games that usually offer scary moments. My favourite video game genre is the 2D platformer. But a few years ago, I actually got startled by one!
As with all of these moments, it's not nearly as significant when watching back a video as opposed to playing it yourself, and obviously it's not nearly as significant when you're expecting something to happen... but maybe you can imagine that I got scared here!
https://youtu.be/b596fmSynuM

(if you stay around they take up the entire screen and you die; this will probably happen the first time you play the level, which increases the shock factor!)

[NieSch]

Getting caught in Chicken Run: https://youtu.be/thRXO3YwOCg?t=511

[WillLem]

What I'm liking is that none of the examples given so far are typical jump scares, most of them are moments of genuine eeriness/wierdness.

[LanaAndCo]

Ah, so people got creeped out by Myst? That's really interesting... I never found Myst creepy when I was little (after I finally disassociated it from Forestia of course ). Well I guess Achenar's rooms are a bit spooky but other than that, Myst was a walk in the park. In fact, it's one of those games that can instantaneously calm me down. The dreamlike landscapes and the musics are so soothing to me, especially the tower.
I see that some people are saying that the eeriness comes from being lost on deserted islands without knowing what to do and the loneliness. I can agree. I had a buggy version of the Masterpiece Edition where the cutscenes didn't load and therefore, I didn't know about Sirius and Achenar being in the red and blue books, so I was really alone. All I would see in the books was a black rectangle.

Sheesh... that Donkey Kong Country Returns level gave me goosebumps, I hate spiders! This is nightmare fuel for arachnophobes.   That kind of remind me of the blindfolded boos levels from Super Princess Peach, those were really stressful!

Can't say I'm really surprised by that "got caught" scene from the Chicken Run game, the film was kinda dark (but I must admit the sound is terrifying ). This made me remember of that freaking horrifying robot dog from one of the Wallace and Gromit film. I guess the Aardman team is good at making dogs scary.

[SQron188]

For horror games, exploring Alchemilla in Silent Hill 1 immediately comes to my mind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q2lmeEYASfg&t=360
There's also plenty of stuff in the FPS/horror game F.E.A.R. - 1st person view scariness, yay
https://youtu.be/tffB6eRVVoM?list=PLh-NqKHZgzK2g7-HEY3I-CN5Gqqtj3P0H

For non-horror games, this astonishing turn in Turrican II...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRaK6bxWqGY&t=2478
...and just about every other mission I played in X-COM Terror from the Deep, and I've played loads...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cUeahBeeyTg&list=PLh-NqKHZgzK0jENsnzby-ahJUs8W505DD&index=6

[mobius]

another old example probably familiar to a lot of people; redeads from Ocarina of Time.

A newer game (relativley speaking) Half Life 2; in particular this part;

https://youtu.be/91uWeqArrok?t=5353

This player passes through this area so fast you can't tell but there are at least 3 big zombies hidden in this area at specific spots + infinite spawning regular zombies. It's designed so that the longer you spend in that area the harder it gets. But there's a lot of back and forth and looping around. When I was navigating my way around this area for the first time, I had encountered one of the big zombies then got away from it (in the darker lower corner of the area). A few minutes later when I was figuring out that you need to pull a lever on the upper level of that little house building where you go up steps; I turned around that big zombie was just standing right freaking next to me! Scared the piss out of me. Idk how the freak it got there, it must have followed me quite a distance and I hadn't looked behind me in a quite a while, which I usually do when playing games like that.

[LemSteven]

Believe it or not, one of the games that spooked me early on was Lemmings!  It was smooth sailing until I hit Fun 17, and then those hidden crusher traps scared the living daylights out of me.  Maybe that's why to this day I abhor traps of any kind, especially hidden ones.

I'll also give an honorable mention to King's Quest: Mask of Eternity.  For anyone who's not familiar with the King's Quest saga, the final installment was a huge departure from the rest of the series.  The first seven games were your typical Sierra adventure games, with convoluted puzzles that took a ridiculous amount of trial and error to solve, with many (often humorous) deaths occurring in the process.

The final game of the series switched over to the RPG genre with a few adventure-style puzzles mixed in.  It also took on a much darker tone than the previous installments and added a combat element.  Basically the game starts with the titular Mask of Eternity being shattered by the game's primary antagonist.  This action unleashes a magical storm that turns everyone in the kingdom into stone, except for the player, who happens to catch a piece of the Mask as it falls from the sky, thus protecting him from the storm's effects.  The first part of the game has the player exploring the petrified town, gathering resources and seeking clues on how to break the magical curse, while fighting hideous undead creatures that seem to pop up out of nowhere.

Once the player completes the first stage of the game in town, the environments just get more inhospitable from there.  Many of the scenes in the game are very dimly lit, with background music that ranges from creepy to spine-tingling.

Many fans of the earlier games in the series were understandably upset at the darker atmosphere and combat-oriented gameplay of the final installment.  Personally, I don't think the game was horrible on its own (although it had its share of bugs), but it departed far enough from its roots that it never should have been given the "King's Quest" moniker.

[kaywhyn]

Believe it or not, one of the games that spooked me early on was Lemmings!  It was smooth sailing until I hit Fun 17, and then those hidden crusher traps scared the living daylights out of me.  Maybe that's why to this day I abhor traps of any kind, especially hidden ones.

Interesting. I think for me it was actually Havoc 1 that made me afraid of hidden traps even though I kind of vaguely remember encountering them first on Fun 17. Even moreso since the icicle trap results in blood/gore coming out when it kills and slices a lemming in half, for which I'm not too much of a fan. Perhaps the goriest custom trap I've seen so far was recently in my LP of David's The Lemmings Have Grown pack on Marathon 1. I think you'll even get to see it get triggered in the LP video. The trap is clearly visible, but curiosity definitely killed the cat here and hence I just wanted to see what would happen if a lemming gets killed in the trap. To be fair, the level's in a tileset for which I have never ever played any Lemmings levels in and hence I'm not familiar with any of the traps or objects at all. Then again, it is the only Prince of Persia level in the entire pack and hence the only level in such a tileset I have played thus far as far as custom Lemmings level packs are concerned. They might even be custom additions by David's to Proxima's tileset. I'm not sure.

[Proxima]

Then again, it is the only Prince of Persia level in the entire pack and hence the only level in such a tileset I have played thus far as far as custom Lemmings level packs are concerned. They might even be custom additions by David's to Proxima's tileset. I'm not sure.

The chopper trap is in my original tileset, and it comes from the original Prince of Persia game, where it's just as gory -- and some of the guards are easiest to deal with by knocking them back so they go into choppers. I apologise if it was upsetting. I'm actually extremely squeamish myself, and to this day I not only won't use the icicle trap, I make sure I never have to watch it happening.

I never ran into the traps on Fun 17, since I took the route of bashing out to the right and making 20 lemmings floaters (since you only have to save 20), but I remember that my first experience of a trap, on Fun 21, and watching everyone splat on Cascade were very upsetting for me; I was 8 at the time. I am okay with those things now

[Silken Healer]

Believe it or not, one of the games that spooked me early on was Lemmings!

There's a video which showcases some of the unintentionally creepy moments in Lemmings

Spoiler

(All the 6's, Gory Traps ect.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2IbUYZ_zus