Scary setting description: Setting Description Entry: Haunted House (inside)

Setting Description Entry: Haunted House (inside)

Sight
Dust, cobwebs, sheets on furniture, broken tables, chairs, windows, lamps, peeling wallpaper, gaps in the floorboards, holes in the walls, flickering lights (if there’s electricity) chandelier with broken strings of crystals, broken glass on the floor, spiders, cockroaches, rust, mildew, ripped curtains, shadows, gloomy staircases, old portraits & paintings, cracked…

Sounds

footsteps on the stair, creaking doors, window shutters rattling on the outside, wind scattering/rustling paper through a broken window gap, words whispered in ear, screams, crying, wailing, laughter, glass smashing, the scrap of a chair moving, the scritch of tree branches scraping at the windows, rats squeaking, movement in the walls, a…

Smells

Phantom perfume or cologne, burning smells, pipe or cigarette smoke, mildew, rot, dank, rusty or metallic smells, wet wood and stone, rancid breath, yeasty beer smell, food, dust, dry rot, rat/mice feces, urine

Tastes

Sour & dry mouth from fear, dust floating in the air and coating the tongue, salty tears

Touch

A phantom hand on the shoulder, the puff of breath on the earlobe or the back of the neck, the sensation of being grabbed on the arm, pushed, pulled, pinched, poked, slapped, burned, a feeling of light-headedness and nausea, hair rising on arms or the back of the neck, the body’s reaction to a drop in temperature (chills, shivering, breath puffing out…

Helpful hints:

–The words you choose can convey atmosphere and mood.

Example 1: I cringed at each creak on the old warped stairs, but it didn’t sway my determination to make it to the bedroom on the second floor. Halfway up, a shadow flickered at the corner of my vision. I froze, and as I stood there, caught a woody scent lingering in the air. Tobacco smoke? A shiver curled through the hairs on the back of my neck then cascaded down my backbone. It was all I could do to not hurl myself back down the stairs toward the front door…

–Similes and metaphors create strong imagery when used sparingly.

Example 1: (Metaphor) The dining room chair suddenly jolted back and tilted toward me, a gracious invitation by an invisible host…

Think beyond what a character sees, and provide a sensory feast for readers

Setting is much more than just a backdrop, which is why choosing the right one and describing it well is so important. To help with this, we have expanded and integrated this thesaurus into our online library at One Stop For Writers.

Each entry has been enhanced to include possible sources of conflict, people commonly found in these locales, and setting-specific notes and tips, and the collection itself has been augmented to include a whopping 230 entries—all of which have been cross-referenced with our other thesauruses for easy searchability. So if you’re interested in seeing this powerful Setting Thesaurus, head on over and register at One Stop.

On the other hand, if you prefer your references in book form, we’ve got you covered, too, because both books are now available for purchase in digital and print copies. In addition to the entries, each book contains instructional front matter to help you maximize your settings. With advice on topics like making your setting do double duty and using figurative language to bring them to life, these books offer ample information to help you maximize your settings and write them effectively.

BECCA PUGLISI

Becca Puglisi is an international speaker, writing coach, and bestselling author of The Emotion Thesaurus and its sequels. Her books are available in five languages, are sourced by US universities, and are used by novelists, screenwriters, editors, and psychologists around the world. She is passionate about learning and sharing her knowledge with others through her Writers Helping Writers blog and via One Stop For Writers—a powerhouse online library created to help writers elevate their storytelling.

10 Words to Describe a Spooky Graveyard

If you’re writing a horror story in which there is a graveyard setting, this post is for you. In it, we’ve included 10 words to describe spooky graveyard. Read on to learn more.

 

1. Eerie

Definition

Someone or somewhere that’s frightening and strange.

Examples

“She slowly crept into the eerie graveyard, and prayed that she was alone and not being watched.”

“He felt unsettled every time he walked past the eerie graveyard, even if he was on the opposite side of the street. ”

How it Adds Description

The word “eerie” describes a place that’s equal parts frightening and odd, which is ideal for describing a graveyard that’s spooky. This word can help to build suspense and scare your reader via imagery. However, it can also show your character is feeling spooked, as “eerie” places often cause characters to become nervous.

 

2. Sinister

Definition

Somewhere that is scary, evil, or potentially harmful.

Examples

“The sinister graveyard loomed across the road. She felt its presence beckoning her, but she tried to ignore the impulse to visit.”

“Visiting the sinister graveyard wasn’t on his to-do list, especially after the rumors surrounding the strange rituals that had been spotted there.”

How it Adds Description

Graveyards are a classic horror trope and they’re easily linked with scary plotlines. The word “sinister” can be used to link your graveyard with evil groups or stories, and this will make it clear to your reader that the spot is somewhere to be scared of. This word can also foreshadow future events, as “sinister” implies a place is very bad or scary.

 

3. Bizarre

Definition

Something or somewhere extremely strange or weird.

Examples

“The graveyard was just bizarre, why would anyone want to hang out there?”

“As she looked around, she realized that this wasn’t your average graveyard — it was bizarre and nothing like the ones she grew up with.”

How it Adds Description

If your spooky graveyard is more unsettling than frightening, the word “bizarre” can help you get your point across. “Bizarre” portrays a place that’s very odd, but not terrifying. Therefore, you can show your reader the graveyard isn’t a comfortable place, but it’s not somewhere to avoid. This is a powerful word to use when you first start building suspense.

 

4. Chilling

Definition

Something or somewhere scary.

Examples

“The chilling graveyard isn’t a joke, you really shouldn’t go there. ”

“She opened her eyes and the blood drained from her cheeks, she was in the chilling graveyard again.”

How it Adds Description

If you want to convey how scary your graveyard is, “chilling” is a great adjective to use. “Chilling” is a synonym for scary, meaning it can portray your character’s fear and you can use it to make your reader creeped out. This is a particularly effective word in horror or thriller novels, as it can help to set the tone of the location.

 

5. Unnerving

Definition

A place that leaves you feeling uncomfortable or worried.

Examples

“As they paced through the unnerving graveyard, their hairs started to stand on end. They needed to leave now.”

“It was an unnerving graveyard, and she wishes she’d never stepped inside its rusted old gates.”

How it Adds Description

The word “unnerving” shows that a location isn’t comfortable and leaves characters worried or anxious. This can be described as a spooky graveyard as “unnerving” portrays that there’s something wrong with the spot, allowing you to build fear and foreshadow future plot points that relate to the location.

 

6. Disturbing

Definition

Somewhere or something that leaves you feeling upset or worried.

Examples

“The bus passed the disturbing graveyard, and all of the passengers turned their heads. They didn’t want to risk seeing what lurked amongst the headstones.”

“He remembered the disturbing graveyard, but rarely admitted it. It was a memory he wished he could forget.”

How it Adds Description

The word “disturbing” pairs well with spooky or scary places, as this adjective implies that the location leaves characters feeling scared, upset, or worried. This further implies that the graveyard isn’t a pleasant place, thus leaving your readers curious to find out more. If you want to build intrigue, “disturbing” can help.

 

7. Woeful

Definition

Somewhere very sad, undesirable, or bad.

Examples

“The woeful graveyard appeared in her dream once again, and she awoke with a feeling of deep discomfort.”

“They visited the woeful graveyard once, but none of them remained the same. Each left a piece of their happiness within the gates.”

How it Adds Description

“Woeful” describes that your graveyard is either extremely sad or a negative place, and you can use this to build up a description of the location. If you want your graveyard to be spooky and retain an emotional edge, “woeful” can get this across. For example, one character might find the graveyard more “woeful” than others as they may have passed family members resting there.

 

8. Uncanny

Definition

Something or someone that’s strange, mysterious, or difficult to explain.

Examples

“He spent the night in the uncanny graveyard, but he never felt alone. Something was off with the place…”

“The uncanny graveyard looked normal enough, but something was not quite right about the vast rows of headstones.”

How it Adds Description

The word “uncanny” signified that something is off about a person or place. This word usually offers negative connotations, and you can use it to portray your graveyard as a mysterious or unsettling place. This is a helpful adjective to use if you want to set your graveyard apart from typical portrayals.

 

9. Dreadful

Definition

Somewhere that’s very horrible/terrible or poor quality.

Examples

“The dreadful graveyard hasn’t been cleared in years, and you could barely see the tombstones under the thick moss.”

“It was a dreadful graveyard, yet she still felt a certain appeal to its unkempt grounds.”

How it Adds Description

If you’re describing the appearance of your graveyard, the word “dreadful” gives an image of a run-down or neglected site. However, “dreadful” can also imply that the graveyard is scary, as it might fill your characters with “dread”.

 

10. Frightful

Definition

Somewhere very unpleasant or a place that fills you with fear.

Examples

“I shall not enter that frightful graveyard ever again!”

“She wouldn’t pass the frightful graveyard once the sun was down.”

How it Adds Description

“Frightful” can imply that a place is in bad condition, so this adjective can convey the physical state of your spooky graveyard to readers. This is a good way to build up a visual image of your setting. The word can also imply how the graveyard scares characters, and this can explain their avoidance or fascination with the place.

Brief description of the setting — Amadeus playground — RPG diary

(Previous) History

At the beginning of the 21st century, some states began to use various kinds of terrorists and extremists instead of the regular army to solve their geopolitical problems. It became so profitable that by the 1920s it had become widespread. Indeed, why attack an inconvenient neighbor, if you can just as well use a handful of radicals, helping them with money and weapons. The costs are several orders of magnitude lower, the result is the same. In addition, you can always be baptized from terrorists, but hardly from your tanks on foreign territory.

Practically every more or less large state began to feed tame outcasts, hiding behind beautiful slogans. The baton for the states was taken over by large corporations, which found that it was much cheaper and more effective not to sue competitors, but to massacre someone else’s office or blow up an inconvenient factory or kidnap the head of a company. Moreover, it turned out that with the help of terrorism, corporations can also influence the internal politics of states, up to complete control. Of course, everyone who could imagine immediately took care of the presence of an antidote, each power structure, each corporation acquired special units to combat terrorism. Thus, with one hand, feeding their terrorists, with the other hand, they fought the terrorists of enemies and competitors.

By 2025, terrorism has become a system, self-sufficient and difficult to destroy. And the world was horrified. The life of ordinary citizens both in developed countries and in third world countries began to cost less than sand, terrorist groups in their free time from their main occupation were engaged in kidnapping, smuggling, drug trafficking and slavery. People became afraid to go to work, to shops and just go out into the street where they could be kidnapped, robbed and killed at any moment.

Organized crime, with rare exceptions, enthusiastically accepted the idea of ​​terrorism, and terrorism itself became a profitable business, and terrorists essentially became ordinary mercenaries who, for good pay and cover from above, were ready for anything. A wave of protests arose around the world, many states, frightened, began to break ties with terrorism and actively fight it on their territory. But not everyone succeeded. Great Britain, Japan, Canada, Australia, Turkey, Jordan and the countries of Northern Europe, which slowly began to move away from the European Union, suppressed any resistance of radicals on their territory, severed any connection with terrorism, for which they introduced the death penalty, corporations that fell on even the slightest hint of suspicion of links to terrorism was ruthlessly punished. Even the criminality of these countries helped in the fight against terrorism. But having protected their citizens, these countries suffered serious economic losses, corporations left the market (or were expelled), taking their capital.

The standard of living of citizens began to decline, but for the most part they were ready to make such sacrifices for their own safety. The United States has not abandoned the use of terrorism, but has seriously limited their activity on its territory, imposing its own rules of the game on large corporations. Along the way, huge funds were spent to finance a large number of special forces and a global anti-terrorist security system in the states.

Geopolitics

China, India, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and the European Union are actively fighting (or pretending to be fighting) terrorism, but they are not succeeding. They are too bogged down in this system, there is too much resistance from within, especially from criminal gangs and corporations. But the flip side of this was prosperity and economic growth, through these countries terrorists are financed, there is laundering and accumulation of capital of various terrorist organizations. Russia, the countries of the post-Soviet space, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia were less fortunate, they failed in the fight against terrorism, their territory, while formally remaining intact, was actually divided by various groups of terrorists and for the most part are controlled through terrorists by large corporations, just like almost all third world countries, their territory has become a source of human resources and minerals, the inhabitants of these countries lead a miserable existence, their life is completely dependent on the militants who seized power. On the territory of these countries, there are often clashes between different groups of terrorists up to local conflicts. Israel, fully included in the US security system, like the states, is trying to balance between the security of its citizens and the benefits that terrorism provides.

Sex, Drugs and Rock’n’Roll Netrunning, Implants and Drugs

In 2039, two chemist students experimenting with synthetic drugs discover a new drug, originally called «yolk» (due to its golden color). The new drug had a mild and pleasant hallucinogenic effect for a couple of hours. The new drug quickly gained great popularity, especially when it turned out that the yolk is not addictive and does not have irreversible effects on the human body, the latter had an impact on the fact that the drug was legalized in all countries, receiving a new name peeper (the most common hallucination was that a person had an interlocutor of pleasant appearance, with whom it was fashionable to giggle, chat about nothing, in general, have fun). After 5 years, a programmer at the Virtucon software development corporation, being under a dose of peepers, was testing a new program written by himself, and suddenly fell into the bright and colorful virtual world of a computer game that was running in the background. Two hours later, he landed from the virtual reality absolutely stunned.

Having recovered a little, he repeated the experiment and rushed to the authorities. Half a year later, Virtucon, together with partners from pharmaceutical and computer companies, launched a product on the market in the form of glasses that transmit a picture to the pupil, connected to manipulator gloves and an injector with a peeper reservoir, the drug itself was called Virtusin. This kit allowed users to immerse themselves in the virtual world of entertainment supported by the company’s servers. But the monopoly could not be maintained. Competitors, not wanting to stand aside, quickly copied and in some places improved the device and software, and the Virtusin formula is known to many. The world of the Internet has changed rapidly.

Internet resources one after another switched to new software, while the ability to use them through the old interfaces remained, just without using virtusin, a person did not get into virtual reality, but watched a normal picture on the screen of his device. After all, despite the availability of a peeper, this drug remained quite expensive to manufacture, and if, say, some hard worker could lower his monthly salary and go into a virtual brothel for a day, then he could no longer afford to enter the network under virtusin every day. . Even the name has changed, the Internet has become more and more often called a virtunet and just a virtual machine. Corporations have invested huge amounts of money in studying the effects of virtusin on humans, but apart from the general principles, it was not possible to really understand the biochemistry of the process itself.

On the other hand, one after another, more and more new properties of combining different dosages of the drug with various programs began to be discovered. Thus, it was possible to record information in the human brain, although the person himself could not know anything, because at the same time, in the area where the information was recorded, there was a kind of numbness and all the information that was lost there, and if you make a mistake and write down the information not on the gray matter, but into the active part of the brain, it was easy to erase partially or completely the personality of a person. As a rule, this technology began to be used to store especially important information that was afraid to be entrusted to computers because of the danger of hacking. And this danger has increased significantly since the use of virtusin in combination with appropriate programs made it possible for hackers to intuitively and very quickly bypass protection and hack into even the most secure servers. Accordingly, on the other hand, programmers protecting these servers under the influence of virtusin and with the help of other programs learned to increase protection and repel attacks.

The hacking process itself has turned into a virtual confrontation. And everything was not limited to this, opportunities opened up with the help of virtusin not only to crack someone else’s protection, but also to destroy someone else’s computer equipment, causing overloads and short circuits. And, finally, people have learned to incapacitate people through virtual space. This was usually done through someone else’s injector with virtusin. Indeed, for serious work, a programmer needs a decent supply of virtusin in the injector, every two hours it is necessary to inject the minimum dose so as not to simply land out of virtuality, in the work itself, for various effects, additional doses of different sizes were required, while they were administered either automatically or at the command of the operator. But if too large a dose was accumulated in the body at the same time, the person fell into a stupor and could not recover for a day. When they came to their senses, they did not remember anything that happened during this time, but about 2% of people were tormented by terrible nightmares and 9out of 10 went crazy over it. Such cases did not respond to treatment. This was used by hackers, hacking other people’s injectors and forcing them to inject an excessive dose of virtusin.

Later it was possible to develop programs that at the time of overdose increase the likelihood of deadly nightmares. And terrorism came to the virtual machine from the real world, showdowns between corporations, terrorists and government agencies began to occur more and more often on the network. New opportunities were also given by the invention of the neuro interface, which allows you to do without glasses and gloves and significantly speed up the reaction in virtual confrontations. By the way, various implants have been used for a long time, at first they returned lost opportunities to disabled people, treated terminally ill people, then, with the improvement of the implants themselves, they increasingly began to use them to enhance their capabilities (primarily representatives of risky professions), but the attitude towards such people the old was preserved, seeing a mechanical limb or a lens instead of an eye, people subconsciously treated their owner as a disabled person, forgetting that such a disabled person, if desired, could tear his opponent to pieces in a couple of seconds. And only the attitude towards the owners of the neurointerface was completely different: respect and even apprehension.

How to create tension in horror games. Part one / Habr

Tension, stress and suspense are the 3 pillars of a horror game. The best games in this genre slowly heat up the atmosphere in the game to the limit and then release the tension in several stages. To some extent, it is precisely due to this that the effect of extreme involvement is achieved: when the player is so engrossed in the game that he experiences physical stress.

Good horror games always have a well-thought-out suspense, and it goes much deeper than low-brow haunted house-style intimidation. The goal of horror design is to maximize player engagement and emotional return. But be warned: the best games in the genre only use the immersive effect of horror content to connect with the player. Horror games are capable of dealing with topics that no other genre can. The point is not just to scare the player, but to make him receptive to what you want to convey to him.

Of course, most of the scary content in games is not the product of game design, but rather of storytelling. The setting, atmosphere, and characters are the foundation of the basics needed to hook the player and give them chills. But games also have other tools, such as game mechanics and player interaction. The problem of creating fear in a game is not just limited to narrative, it touches every aspect of game design. This is why creating tension in games is a very challenging and interesting task for designers.

This article is about the mechanics of horror games. It will not be about story or narrative, but about the design of game systems needed to make the game more dynamic. You can think of this article as sort of an overview of all the patterns we experimented with during the development of our mystery/horror game called Dead Secret, which was released last October for Gear VR and is coming soon to Steam and PlayStation. This is not a horror game design guide, but rather a list of ideas for using game mechanics to create tension in a game.

The main task of all the patterns below is to involve the user in the gameplay so much that he forgets about everything around. Thomas Grip, designer of games such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent and SOMA, calls the state of total immersion in a game «a sense of presence.» These patterns are also needed to constantly throw the player off balance. Game mechanics are often built on the recognition of a repeating pattern by the player.

They have a similar structure and are easy to recognize. This is convenient because it allows you to develop a habit. If you want to scare the player, you need to make him believe that he is not in control, that the rules can change at any time, and that he is not able to fully comprehend everything that happens inside the game world. Horror games must maintain a delicate balance of vulnerability and helplessness, but not allow the feeling of complete confusion and confusion.

As a horror game designer, it is very important for you to focus the player’s attention on the narrative context of the game, and not on its mechanics. You want the player to identify with their character in the game, and not act as an independent person doing tasks in a playful way. Many of the ideas presented here are aimed at changing the mindset of the player from a systemic way of problem solving (analyzing statistics, minimum and maximum scores, thinking about design patterns or tactics) to a contextual one («Who sent this hint?» or «How get out of here?»). Some of these patterns are not entirely successful for other game genres, as they prevent the player from rendering the game like a Rubik’s Cube. But after all, collecting a Rubik’s Cube is not as scary as, say, deciding which ancient artifact is best suited as a weapon against the One Who Has Many Names.

One way to create a sense of belonging in the game content for the player is to make losing meaningful to both the player and their character. Game Over usually means the death of a character, but how do you get the player to feel the loss too?

This is usually achieved by placing save points at regular intervals so that if the character dies, the player loses all game progress. This works well, especially if savepoints are interesting in their own right (see Alien: Isolation’s savepoint system). But the concept of savepoints has long gone out of fashion. Dark Souls, for example, uses a more modern system of creating tension in the game through the fear of losing progress.

Another option is to stress the loss itself. Indie horror games like Five Nights at Freddy’s and Slender have scary creatures jumping out at you if you fail. We chose the latter option for Dead Secret to allow for the ability to save anywhere in the game. This model uses the fear of a sudden event to make the player nervous at the thought of failure.

By hiding from the player the various numbers and metrics that accompany the game, you position him for a contextual way of thinking. How much health do I have left? Can the enemy see me? Am I going in the right direction? How many shots does it take to defeat this boss? In any other genre, giving players access to all this data is considered good form. But in horror games, it’s best to give information only through some sort of contextual abstraction.

For example, the games Resident Evil and Silent Hill have traditionally used very approximate categories for displaying the level of health (Fine, Caution, Danger) — even though “under the hood” all the same calculations are made in the same way as in any other game. In addition, Resident Evil uses animation to indicate the level of health: you may not know for sure how soon you will die, but when your character is crouching while holding his stomach, things are clearly bad.

By hiding the information and rules of the game, you do not leave the user the opportunity to find safe paths and use the minimax strategy. It also brings some uncertainty into the game. When the user is not completely sure how the system works, he is forced to rely on the environment and the plot to make decisions.

In Dead Secret, I tried to achieve the effect of uncertainty by abandoning the «safe zone» principle. In other words, there is not a single place in the game where the player could feel completely safe: an insidious enemy in a hood and with a No mask on his face can lie in wait for you anywhere and deliver a mortal blow. At least I would like our players to believe it.

There is some serious medical research suggesting that people are more likely to experience fear when they are physiologically aroused. In psychology, this phenomenon is called arousal misattribution. To do this, the player must be in a state where his pulse quickens, adrenaline is released into the blood, and he begins to sweat. If, however, scary game content is added to all this, the user becomes predisposed to “false” emotions: there is a possibility that the brain will respond incorrectly to the stimulus, as a result of which the player will really get scared.

Misattribution is a very powerful form of emotional control. But it has one important caveat: it only works when the subject is not aware that he is in a state of arousal. Psychologists proved this with one experiment: they selectively injected subjects with adrenaline, and as a result, they were able to evoke false emotions only in cases where the subjects were unaware of the injections. It turns out that you, as a designer, need to inflate the player so that he does not even understand this.

Stimulus: fearsome grizzly bear approaching
Excitation : palpitations, trembling, sweating, flight
Cognitive label: “What a terrible bear! I’m afraid of him!»
Emotion: Fear

Schechter-Singer’s two-factor theory of emotions states that emotions arise under the influence of physiological arousal and the contextual interpretation of this arousal. Misattribution can occur when our brains use a ready-made context to justify our physiological arousal.

Usually complex and unpredictable game systems are used to discreetly put the user into a state of physiological arousal. It can be a crude and difficult combat system, like in Condemned, where even the lowest level enemy is able to kill the player if he hesitates.