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[JasonPickering]

so i think a feeling of being helpless has always worked well into horror games. having no chance against a monster is scary. but here is a question. no monster you create is scarier then what the player can imagine. so how can you give the feeling of a monster chasing you without ever showing it. If the player stops the monster would catch up to them and they would see it. so how would you do this?

[starsrift]

Both Dungeon Master(played on an Amiga) and X-Com: Ufo Defense stand out as two of the scariest games I've ever played. Both for the same reason - sound, and expectations. I didn't expect them to be scary games. Neither would you. But somewhere around 2am in a quiet home with nothing but heartbeat-like sounds (Mummy's movement in DM, music in X-Com), they get frightening. (I mention that DM was played on an Amiga, because the PC version was shit in quality comparison, and the sound not nearly as good.)

More modern games that gave me chills were Vampire: Bloodlines and Kuon, again, for the same reason, sound.

[Gimym TILBERT]

[BrandonQ]

Well scary games often contain monsters. And as in game like Amnesia, its not the monsters that are scary its not know where they are and being stuck in the dark thus being blinded. This leaves one main resources which is audio that the player has to guide themselves with and making the audio scary which is the players main resource for understanding their surroundings will thus, make them have to use both resources (audio and visuals) together to try and squeeze out what is not scary and find their path. This may force people to slow down as they don't know what to expect.

[C.A. Sinner]

good sound design

good use of lighting

no combat (every direct confrontation with an enemy ends in death)

bad ending

[antybaner]

Sound my friend. You must hear the monster and anticipate it. Let your imagination see it before your eyes.

[Guiber]

The guys from "Frictional Games", creators of "Amnesia" have a blog; "In The Games Of Madness". There you can find essays and blogposts with their point of view on how to make things scary.

http://frictionalgames.blogspot.com/

[7Soul]

Half-life 2 (episode 1?) was pretty darn scary to me, with all the zombies (and zombines!) and all. Even though I had weapons and save states, I was pretty scared >_<
The sounds helped a lot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCFdpOMiCzs

[My Escape]

There are some brilliant ideas here.

I personally feel that story is important in making something scary.  Granted you can combine shocks and gore without a plot but if you want to build something really scary it has to be directed. 

Now that doesn’t mean the story needs to be anything complex, but it’s that core goal that will strengthen the tension leading between points of interest.

A point of interest could include found blood splatter, a corpse being dragged in the distance or an eerie groan from off screen.  Use these points of interest intelligently to control the tension a player feels.  You also need to use plot twists which extend the challenge. 

Also I don’t believe you need darkness to make a game (or anything) scary.  I’ve just used cliché examples above, but anything you think is scary in real life will work as the core goal or setting.

Good luck with your game!   

[PompiPompi]

Some of the things already mentioned. I think basically it's making something unexpected. Like pick a boo.
You know that troll apps they used to make where you would concentrate on some game and then suddenly something scary would appear on the screen?
However, you will probably need to make it more sophisticated, because the player will know he is playing a scary game.
The unexpected thing still applies though, you just need to give hints and confuse the player so he won't actually expect what you will eventually bring him up.
For instance, if it is possible, making all sort of dim sounds that you don't exactly know where they are coming from, so you know something is there but you don't know where or when it will appear. Or what is it.
Or, shades in the dark, you see something, but then it's just the curtains, but the next time you see something it will be actually a monster, and etc.
So yea, basically being surprising, I would think.

[Kramlack]

Since I'm in deep thought about this subject currently, I guess I'll join the discussion.

I feel like psychological horror is everything. Jump scares as mentioned before are awful and a cheap cop-out from truly instilling fear into the player. Yeah, they scare you the first time, but after you come to expect them. I've thought about various things such as creepypasta's or the Silent Hill franchise and how they effect me today. The Slenderman creepypasta, for example, is still unsettling to me, and every time I walk past an open window at night, I briefly look out, as if to check to see if he's out there. In that regard, Slenderman has won me over as a horror story. It's been so long since I've read it and I still think about it to this day. That's the effect I feel that you want to try and give the player.

If the person is still disturbed/unsettled/alarmed by your game or story after the fact, then you've succeeded in the best kind of horror there is.

I realize I haven't really touched on how to create that effect because the truth is, aside from it being hard to find the right mix of ingredients to create the atmosphere, people also have different tastes. Where I might find Slenderman scary, others might find it funny or even calming. So my only advice is do what you think will create the most fear for people, and hopefully more-people-than-not will find it terrifying.

[Sir Raptor]

I can't say I've played a great deal of scary games, but one that really stuck with me was Dementium: The Ward. I feel like it nailed several aspects of horror that work well, particularly the aspects of insecurity and fallibility. Paranoia is made into a simple evolution of the game experience; closets can contain ammunition and medicine, sometimes, then zombies can be found in closets. Zombies can be corpses on the ground, and they can climb over railings. You learn to take things slowly and look everywhere before rushing ahead, and you get the impression that you're never safe.

Interestingly, it also taught me that controls can be vital to the experience. The gun control's aimed by touch screen, so you can't be a deadeye. You control the camera by sliding around on the touch screen, so you can't make pixel-perfect movements, making weak point tropes a rarity, much like headshots in RE2. In an extent, the touch screen camera becomes, possibly unintentionally, your own personal view. You are not a master shot. You are alone, and you must preserve what little ammunition you have. The way a game controls can influence a horror game just as well as the atmosphere of the game itself.

And for what it's worth, Ao Oni has what is possibly the greatest jump scare of any game.

[astraios]

Agreed with everything mentioned here, especially the profound importance of unpredictability.

A neat brain trick I've done on the more technical graphical side is use film noise. Film noise should be more visible in darkened areas, and your brain sees the dark and noisy areas as more interesting as it tries to make out what's hidden within. Having something emerge makes it extra spooky.

[7Soul]

You can also turn a common thing scary by conditioning the player to think it's scary. For instance, have a door with a red light under it, and when you open it a monster appear.
Next time you have a door like that, the player with be apprehensive

[ThePortalGuru]

Tip:
http://comic.naver.com/webtoon/detail.nhn?titleId=350217&no=31&weekday=tue

This actually brings up something awesome.  Break the fourth wall.  Utilize your medium.  Don't do it too often, or make it too obvious, but do it.  What made this so horrifying wasn't the fact that it was a screamer, but the fact that it completely subverted the notion that webcomics are static things.  You lose control of your ability to scroll in the animated sections.  That, to me, is horrifying.  The fact that I can't get past it or escape it.  The fact that it affects my PERSONAL COMFORT in being separated from the story.  Things like fake screen-tearing, crashes, fake error messages, loss of control - anything along those lines is excellent for screwing with the player and making them feel terribly uncomfortable while playing.