The scary aspect of Starbound

I've already found one 'scary' thing. On higher levels the NPCs have higher health, not armor. This enables monsters to almost instantly kill any NPCs. More often than not, when above Beta you'll find lots of empty campsites with fires still burning. This problem also renders guards useless.

 

My home planet is tier 1 and the guards still get owned by lone monsters. It's more frustrating than scary, though.

 

Definitely support this idea, and think that maybe a different story with every abandoned planet/city/civilization, Along with different scenery. Like one "creepy" biome for instance could have dark, dense pine trees, while the other could be a dry, grey, windy desert.

 

Michael Jackson ghost/zombie in-game. What if you heard his music but modified to be more creepier, distant and quiet. And then you could see him, dancing his way towards you with a knife in his hand. Creepy as shit.

 

Frankly, a feature most games don't have, and would be better with, is the ability to put players and mobs to sleep, and drag them around. You could knock someone out and tortute them. This could lead up to scary events, e.g

Your character goes into an avian temple. He thinks: "strange, why is it abandoned?" Suddenly, a dart shoots out from a trap in the wall, stabbing your character in the back. "Shit" he thinks, before blacking out.
When he regains consciousness, a group of Avians are standing over him with a knife, ready to make a sacrifice to kluex.

 

im laughing too hard at this

I like the idea of this, but i think that it might get glitchy and hard to work out in multiplayer servers

 

Personally, I think the giant, vacuous, fleshy caves give me enough nightmares, than you very much.

You have never experienced true fear until you have ventured down into those abominable caverns of flesh and bone.

Ever played DayZ?

Get knocked out by a player who breaks your legs, get dragged half a mile into the center of a town, he then shoots up in the air, drawing zombies to your helpless self as you wake up.

 

Whoa. I'm going to buy day Z as soon as I can.

So um.. For the caves, have you considered the possibility that the planes they're found on may be alive? Like some huge alien creature that feeds off the sun's rays, and orbits it to get food. So maybe when you delve into a "cave of flesh" you're actually.. Um.. Violating a giant planet sized female alien creature.

 

I had a good long think and came up with an idea that I found could be quite frightening if done right.

How about tough and deranged-looking creatures that have advanced path finding and the ability to seek players out from afar? For example, the creature(s) will catch your character's scent in the wind or notice disturbances in their habitat and will then begin hunting you, causing a message saying something along the lines of "You feel uneasy, as if something unfamiliar approaches." and triggering slightly haunting music to play until the creature(s) is/are dealt with. Their eyes could glow and leave feint glowing trails in the dark, and they could have some kind of partially debilitating effect on the player's character, leading to a much more challenging and tense fight. Additionally, they could have the potential to put out/temporarily destroy torches and light sources in order to allow for a build-up of tension as the player waits in the depths of their base, watching the lights in the corridors above them die out one by one, and seeing their character react to the uneasy feeling in different ways.

Sometimes the character may feel inquisitive and want to investigate the presence, other times the character may begin to show signs of panic and say short phrases like "What was that?" or "Something's out there..." and this would potentially allow for a new realism factor as well! 'Fear' could be a factor into the character's well-being, taking into account multiple sub-factors such as claustrophobia, light level, comfort, familiarity of surroundings, strange sounds, and so on. The creatures may well cause the player's character to fill their fear gauge completely and cause them to begin to suffer from debuffs like reduced damage or increased vulnerability to attacks, meaning that players with endgame armour and weapons may still find themselves challenged by strange creatures on lower level planets, prompting players to devise new and improved techniques of dealing with this threat.

Perhaps the creatures' levels could scale to that of the player, so that they're always one planet-level above the player? This would introduce a new challenge to the game that would be both exciting and frightening to the point where players may well want to rework their entire bases in order to better defend themselves, or even try different ways of playing the game to try to make it easier when they're hunted.