Anyone else think this game is terrifying?

[Petroleum Jam]

If I had to pinpoint it, I think this game hits my same phobia of the deep ocean. Haven't played much yet but The Hourglass and Giant's Deep gave me so much anxiety haha

[كريس]

Don't go to Dark Bramble then.

[mommy? (STEVE)]

Originally posted by Petroleum Jam:

If I had to pinpoint it, I think this game hits my same phobia of the deep ocean. Haven't played much yet but The Hourglass and Giant's Deep gave me so much anxiety haha

i was terrified for a long part of the game, the unknown, the sounds. everything. It was very beautiful. I might sound like a ♥♥♥♥♥ but i was pretty spooked for a lot of the game, and it felt pretty great overcoming that fear.

[OwOmaltine]

I m terrified by something on almost every single planet or thing I can land in this game ! T-T

[Battlepigeon]

I thought that Giant's Deep was just a regular gas planet without any surface.

ooooboy was I ever wrong about that. Probably a top 10 gaming moment right there when I passed through the clouds.

[fluffy]

I feel somewhat the same, but not at the level as Subnautica did. That game tickles you good.

[vittau]

Also throw in a bit of megalophobia in the mix.

EDIT: Here's a random megalophobia test for you: does this thing[i.imgur.com] makes your heart skip a beat?

[martind]

The whole time loop thing make the game pretty chill for me. I can fly into the sun or try to get from the moon back to the village with just the jet pack and just wake up again. Except for Dark Bramble. I am putting off going there.

[lil crazy bamb1]

once i played it while high, almost died in real life

[Casia Loopy]

I tried following the probe you see when the game first starts, and pointing your antenae back and listening to the whole solar system brought me to tears.

The fear part is definately related to fear of the ocean. Things like black holes, and stars are uncomprehensibly big and powerful even compared to machines humans make. We can never go inside or we'd be killed in a thousand ways, so they're a dangerous mystery.

[RadioactiveRooster]

I can play horror games straight faced and be fine, Giant's Deep sets off my fight or flight and I hate looking into the ocean.

[Ixzine]

I think just like Subnautica, the fear they bake into the game with their environments and atmospheric audio isn't mainly intended to scare the pee out of you (you know, for the most part)... it's to give you a more nuanced respect for the environments, to slow you down, to add challenge AND patient perspective to general exploration because you're anxious, to set the mood for brooding and solemn scenes. I think the spookiness works great!

[Pocket Dog]

Originally posted by topo yiyo:

once i played it while high, almost died in real life

Get high and play Subnautica at around 2 in the morning, with the audio turned up and the lights off. Good times. :)

[Thunderchild]

This game feels terrifying because it gets space just right! I've read a useful review as why this game is so awesome. Here's the review (warning, large block of text incoming):

"The best game award of 2019 goes to: The Outer Wilds. There are so many games out there that feature space travel and yet none of them really gets it. The horror of an endless dark vacuum so intent on killing you that just 90 seconds in its inanimate presence is more than enough to freeze, suffocate, and explode you inside out. Space is literally the worst place in the universe. People always think of space as above us, but it's not really; you don't have to look up to see space, you have to look away from safety to see space. Then, when you're out there in the nothing, there are jewels; unprocessibly large balls of fire and light held together by our own ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ anger, rocks that can range between husks of nothing or everything some life ever knows, and an endless amount of phenomena that would take our scientific knowledge and ♥♥♥♥ it from ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ to breakfast. But video games just don't get it. They just don't get space. Video games set in space are either just men with big swinging ♥♥♥♥♥ firing at bug-eyed monsters or ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ truck driving simulators. If exploration does happen to be the focus, you'll find out that the main difference between the endless majesty that is life in this universe is the color of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ grass. Yeah, you're in space but it feels inaccessible like a fingerprint wouldn't take on it; like it's behind glass. The Outer Wilds - ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hell - the Outer Wilds gets space. It doesn't care about scale or scientific accuracy, it gets the feel right. Yeah, your ship's made from wood and the majority of planets are the size of of a badly stocked Ikea, but watching all the stars in the sky go out one by one like far off fireworks and knowing that each one could be destroying an entire history and having to do that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ every 22 minutes -- nothing. Nothing has made me feel like that before. No game, no book, no movie. It's beyond extraordinary. Its planets - ♥♥♥♥ - its planets; each one a bizarre impossible place riddled with life and death and decay and nonsense. Each one dense in history and vandalized by time. Each one nightmarish and so, so beautiful and in 22 minutes, they're gone because the Outer Wilds isn't even really about space, it's about the question, the most important and terrifying and unanswerable question anyone ever asks: Why? Why bother? Why bother with any of this? People die, stars burn out, the universe will go quiet and dark and cold and in the longest run, nothing - absolutely nothing matters. Everything dies, the universe included. So why sit around the fire, playing music into a void that doesn't care? Why huddle around the light? Why play? Because, well - look at it. It's mad, all of it. Life is a big stupid blob of meaningless nothing. Yet from that, we find meaning. People, things, animals, art, sofas, cereal, Rubik's cubes, silly little games about space, whatever. None of it matters in the grand scheme - ♥♥♥♥ the grand scheme! There's no logical reason for life and nobody's gonna mourn it when it's gone, but that's what makes it fantastic. Life is a little song that we hum to ourselves and, I wouldn't want it other way. The Outer Wilds is an optimistic game about nihilism. It's a game with no invisible walls, you can complete it in ten minutes if you know what to do - which you won't for hours - and the only limit is knowledge. It's a game literally like no other. The universe is big and long and impossible and daft and you, you happen to be experiencing it at the exact same point that you can play the Outer Wilds as well. Embrace that coincidence. Come on, what are you waiting for? The sun could explode tomorrow." - Daniel Hardcastle 2019

[Petroleum Jam]

Originally posted by fluffy:

I feel somewhat the same, but not at the level as Subnautica did. That game tickles you good.

Yeah Subnautica is the probably the only game I've played that gets me the same way. I'll never forget scanning the back of the Aurora for sub parts in the pitch black. I heard the distant roars getting closer but I was running dark so I thought I was fine. Now they're REALLY close, next thing I know the sea monster chomps down on my seamoth, screams in my ears and chucks me almost a kilometer.

The only times I've slammed alt-f4 faster is when I fall off the edge in Dark Souls lol.

[Petroleum Jam]

Originally posted by vittau:

Also throw in a bit of megalophobia in the mix.

EDIT: Here's a random megalophobia test for you: does this thing[i.imgur.com] makes your heart skip a beat?

That doesn't but absolutely gargantuan objects could, like looking up from the bottom of a cell phone tower might skeeve me a lil. I think to trigger that for me personally it usually has to be something that's not man made, stellar bodies/huge underwater organisms, natural disasters, etc.