The scary aspect of Starbound

I'll just do what I did when I first touched Minecraft in survivor mode. Dig a hole, seal it off. Maybe watch the character loop in crying animation if they include it.

 

It's not gonna be scary!

 

Terraria, not at all. First time in minecraft, quite, if you're utterly ignorant on how to proceed. Lone Survivor and Home are pretty good with their respective ways of implementing horror into the game. Not that I'd expect Starbound to be even close to being scary. Thematically cheerful and you'll always know what's coming. Not going to be expecting scary or gruesome scenarios when you know you'll have randomized weapons and strong melee weapons to deal with them.

 

*charges pads*
Clear!
*Thread was saved from death*

 

maybe a creature that is immensely fast, pitch black and only appears in dark environments and you can't destroy it with weapons but you have to defeat it with your flashlight

 

So far the creatures all look to 'cutesy' although that one with the skullhead and flashing eyes is creepy. Would like to see certain creatures only come out at night, ones that run from your torch light, don't jump but run, or fade like ghosts. Something with an element of stalking. Like you can hear it make a certain noise when you are around it, you can go underground for safety or inside your home. Won't follow in either those but it can 1 shot kill you or something that makes you fear the night and run to your home or underground on a small moon planet or something that doesn't overwhelm or kill the main game.

Make creatures look less cutesy overall would be a good start.

 

Imagine finding a temple covered in blood.

Going to the bottom and hearing horror music followed by screams.

Then it hunts you down.....

 

abandoned spaceship with weird alien organisms? maybe?

 

Dead/dying planets that have creepy music random explosions abandoned towns in ruins.

 

Glitches o'r things that feel horribly out of place for example, while playing starbound you constantly run across cultists o'r avian fanatics that sacrifice people, you even sometimes see them chasing npc's but you never find any evidence of this except the sacrifice table, what if there was more in the massive temple/catacombs than you first expected, imagine going through the dark tunnels expecting to find the usual golden bunny statues and instead you find.......

 

When you die in the game, you die in real life.

 

That isn't scary. There's already planets packed full of weird alien organisms.

 

Birds at night with Shocking Bolt already fit the bill.

But really, I think that some extra categories of types of monsters and certain monster parts should be added, which are spawned entirely based on time of day and whether they're underground/in-a-dungeon or not.

The random creature generation could really be useful for this kind of thing, especially if the creature AI packages were randomized as well (and some extra AI packages were added, such as creatures that find ways into buildings, creatures that can mine through blocks, and creatures that are extremely hostile but don't attack on sight)

 

I fear no thing, but back in the old days of Starbound... the birds... they scare me.

 

Hey, have you seen what birds with Shocking Bolt can do?
I've seen it one-shot kill guards. 300+ damage. In Beta sector.

Seems that not all of their tricks were nerfed.

 

HAH.

BACK IN NAM THE BIRDS WERE HUNTER KILLERS! AND WHEN YOU KILLED EM THE FINAL GIFT THEY GAVE YOU WAS A EXPLODING CORPSE!

Not only that, BUT THE BIRDS SPAWNED IN THE UNDERGROUND AND THEY FOLLOWED YOU ACROSSSS THE WHOLEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE MAP. God forbid a whole squadron saw you.

 

yeah pretty much music is always what is creepier than anything, just like gonzoro said
"Dead/dying planets that have creepy music random explosions abandoned towns in ruins."
its pretty much it, imagine no enemies at all, and appart from creepy the music will also make the planet feel empty, planet background would have alot of shades of grey, and not much color, and dirt would not be fertile, and trees would be dead ones imagine records about an alien species or a big monster or something more sinister where thewriter always types something like "its coming" or "what its that in the wind-(something happened and stopped writing/typing/idunno)" those planets would have really good loot but very scarce, encouraging players to explore the underground and the surface, slowly revealing what secrets that planet has
and finally a boss summoner for whatever creature/creatures lurked in that planet located in a high security container
this is going in suggestions too bytheway

 

hmm, for some reason I keep thinking of creepypasta from pokemon, from Lavender town, to the ghost people in the mansion in diamond/pearl, to the ghost girl in X/Y..."you are not the one...." *disappears*

Adding a sense of fear in a game like this can be pretty hard. The idea of having a sense of helplessness is a great idea, having to run away from some hoard of enemies that cannot be gunned down. Adding a bit of story can work wonders too, though. In the pokemon games, there was so little dialogue about the ghosts, but speculations went through the roof. They were so effective too. I freaked out a bit when I encountered the ghost girl in pokemon x/y for the first time.

 

The fear you get from the original X-Com. Jesus Christ that can be horrifying. Enemies that can see and shoot further than humans, capable of killing anyone in one shot from the get-go...Oh, and the fact that if they decide to chuck a grenade into your Skyranger and everyone is in there...well, have fun getting all that new gear. Don't even get me started on night missions.

Stalker is also pretty good with atmospheric fear. Having the equivalent of blowouts happen that insta-kill would be a very terrifying aspect, but with blowouts come new artifacts to find, as well as anomalies.

 

That would be cool