History NothingIsScarier / VideoGames

* ''VideoGame/FromNextDoor'' utilizes this quite a bit, especially given the Creator/JunjiIto influences (he frequently leaves things vague or unexplained in his stories). We never truly find out [[spoiler:what the creature is and where it comes from, how the house came to be there and what's inside, or what the creature does with those it takes]]. In one ending, Omura says he doesn't think he wants to find out the truth.

** The weirdest part about JENOVA? You see and fight her scattered limbs, you see her severely-downsized form, you see her reborn form...but you never see the planet-destroying original.

* ''VideoGame/{{Ib}}'': You're just wandering in a cursed art gallery trying to get back to the real world for most of the time and barely anything will pop up to scare you out of scripted events, but the ominous music itself is enough to drive you so suspenseful that the biggest fear is ''expecting'' something to happen while they don't.

* ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry1'': After the lights go out in Mallet Castle, its entire geography changes. You can't see more than a few feet in front of you, and the ambience doesn't help either. Of course, this is a HackAndSlash game starring a badass HalfHumanHybrid packing more than enough to take on anything thrown at him, so the effect isn't that powerful.

* ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry1'': There's a giant statue of a male, three-eyed angel facing the entrance of Mallet Island castle. Examining it prompts Dante to speculate that it depicts the God that the Castellans worship. Later, after the castle becomes the DarkWorld, it disappears. [[spoiler: Guess what Mundus looks like once we finally see him?]]

* In ''VideoGame/Portal2'', there's ''always'' someone talking to you. Whether it is [[TheVoice The Announcer]] (who mostly says funny nonsense), [[BigBad [=GLaDOS=]]] (who does nothing but make [[YouAreFat petty]] [[AdoptionDiss insults]] towards you) or [[RobotBuddy Wheatley]] (who tries to help but [[IdiotBall is very bad at it]]), there is always someone there to keep you company. [[spoiler: However, this is thrown out the window ''completely'' at the start of Chapter 6, which is also ''the lowest point in the game'' (literally and figuratively). You've just had freedom ripped away from you at the last moment. Wheatley is DrunkWithPower and has [[FaceHeelTurn turned on you]]. [=GLaDOS=] is [[BalefulPolymorph trapped in]] [[MakesSenseInContext a potato]] and while she keeps you company for the starting cutscene, she immediately gets kidnapped by [[FeatheredFiend a bird]]. You're in an old, run-down part of the facility, everything is rusted and broken down, things are on fire, and there are hazard signs everywhere. And there's ''no-one there''. That feeling of complete and utter loneliness even ''after'' hearing Cave Johnson for the first time makes this one of the creepiest parts in the entire game, and lasts throughout the entire chapter]].

* When exploring Tartarus in ''VideoGame/{{Persona 3}}'' every so often you will enter a floor where there are no enemies at all. Fuuka(Or Mitsuru, most likely Fuuka though) will comment that "something doesn't feel right". She's right, because this is one of the special floors of the game, the "Reaper Floor", where one of the Secret Bosses of the game (Aptly named "The Reaper") spawns after a fixed ''2 minutes'', must we remind you that these floors tend to be ''excruciatingly'' long and be [[SuspiciousVideoGameGenerosity filled with items]]? And that, unless you're max level or is using the cheap Satan & Lucifer trick, he's most likely going to ''slaughter'' you? And the fact the there is a ''chain rustling sound in the background that only gets louder the closer he is''? And that your analyzer (Be it Mitsuru or Fuuka) ''tells'' you that he's spawned, but in a very indirect manner? (Saying something along the lines of "I've got a bad feeling...")

* The ''VideoGame/{{Descent}}'' series likes to play with this trope, all three variants of it. All three games have at least one melee bot that make little to no noise and prefers to hide in dark areas. There are several levels in each game where these robots are a common enemy. Those levels are usually very dark, and will often have areas where there is no noise whatsoever. Using the headlight may not be an option; it runs on energy, and a lot of dark levels have a rather precious supply. Sometimes said enemies are [[InvisibleMonsters stealth-camouflaged]], others [[RoamingEnemy randomly stalk]] you. The soundtrack is also sprinkled with sections where the music drops to near silence without warning. That's if you have the music turned on at all...

** ''VideoGame/PokemonMysteryDungeon'' has a [[https://youtu.be/qm1gWsHwyf0?t=18 mysterious force]] to keep you from stalling on one floor of a dungeon for too long, eventually blowing you away in a gust of wind should you not reach the stairs to the next floor in time. It does give you multiple warnings but never explains what's actually happening.

** In ''VideoGame/HaloCombatEvolved'', the first part of the level "[[WhamEpisode 343 Guilty Spark]]" is like this. After an initial bout of Covenant enemies, you spend the rest of the first half of the level wandering around in '''complete silence'''. There's also the one Marine who evidently saw [[spoiler: the Flood]], and was driven insane by it. When you find him, he starts screaming [[ThroughTheEyesOfMadness "The monsters are everywhere!"]], which only serves to ramp up the ParanoiaFuel UpToEleven. Worse is the ''implications'' of things happening everywhere. You find broken barricades, shattered glass, bullet casings, hallways and floors absolutely covered in various kinds of alien blood. Sometimes you even find piles of corpses behind locked doors. All you have that you think could be behind this is a strange green sludge that's dripping from the ceiling in certain parts that you've never seen before.[[note]]Somewhat undone by the Anniversary edition, where general consensus is the level does a disservice to the paranoia fuel by removing certain bloodstains, making the green sludge harder to see, and lighting the level up.[[/note]]

* ''[[VideoGame/{{Antichamber}} Antichamber]]'' is this trope taken [[UpToEleven to its extreme.]] There are absolutely no antagonists, no way for the player to die, not even so much as a plot, but its [[MindScrew bizzare nature]], [[GainaxEnding even more bizzare ending]], and the fact that [[CreepyChangingPainting parts of the map subtly change]] make the game quite creepy.

** The worst offender combines "There all Along!" with "Nothing at all": [[spoiler: the Abyss below]] the Ancient Basin, the deepest place in the game. While the original place is already this trope once you collect the Monarch Wings, the only sounds being the Knight's movement and the scuttling of the enemies, this specific location takes this UpToEleven: only some normal enemies live here [[spoiler:while the others are some kind of ghosts made in a dark substance and tentacles that are hopefully restrained to black lakes. Once you obtain the Void Heart, these enemies don't attack you anymore: while it can be a reassurance that you've been accepted as one of them, the feeling of loneliness is still disturbing]].

** The Xenomorph spends most of its time in the vents. You can't see it, but you can hear it creaking around, never knowing when it's going to emerge. It's even worse when the alien is out and about stalking you. Not knowing where the monster is is often a more frightening prospect than seeing it across the room. To make matters worse, when you can't see or hear the alien and its disappeared from your motion tracker, it doesn't mean you're safe. It means the the Xenomorph is up to something, which will likely result in your demise.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Fatal Frame V|Maiden of Black Water}}'' there's a ghost of an inhumanly tall woman who wears [[NiceHat a feathered sunhat]] and [[EtherealWhiteDress a white dress]]. She is easily one of the most recognisable, memorable and iconic ghosts in the game. So, what's her name? How did she die? How did she get so damn tall? And why the fuck is she [[SlasherSmile smiling like that]]!? No-one knows. The database only lists her as "[[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Tall Woman]]" and that's all we ever learn about her. She has a few spoken lines, but they only serve to make her ''even scarier'' since the one thing they reveal is that she's an OutsideContextProblem who wasn't dragged into [[BigBad Ouse Kurosawa]]'s grudge against her will or is only reacting to your presence like almost all other ghosts are, instead she is a malevolent presence in her own right and ''she's actively hunting you down''.[[note]]As [[http://bcl.rpen.us/zerowiki/index.php?title=Tall_Woman the wiki]] suggests, the Tall Woman seems to be an adaptation of a Japanese CreepyPasta or urban legend character called [[http://www.scaryforkids.com/eight-feet-tall/ Hachishaku-sama/Hasshaku-sama]] (or "Miss Eight Foot Tall"), a creepily tall woman in a white dress and sunhat who kidnaps children.[[/note]]

* When the player finally goes to Rena in ''VideoGame/TalesOfArise'', what greets them is... nothing. The world itself has been long ''long'' dead, sucked of its astral energy by the Great Astral Spirit of Rena. The player can see buildings and strucutres poking out of an ocean... except that ocean isn't just ''any'' ocean. It's a silvery liquid that, as the player had learned early on, is what remains of living beings who were drained of their astral energy. And it's covering the ''entirety'' of the [[ShatteredWorld remnants of Rena]].

*** [[spoiler: Speaking of Irons the bit where you play as Sherry invokes this. Unlike the gun and knife toting adult protagonists, you’re just a tiny unarmed 12 year old girl who can’t properly defend herself and are AloneWithThePsycho in a creepy orphanage. You don’t actually encounter Irons until you go into his creepy operating room where he’s got the body of a dead woman on his table. The feelings of AdultFear while sneaking around the unnerving environment as Sherry is extremely effective. Then Irons actually comes after you, [[NightmareFuel with his face half burned by acid that Sherry threw at him]]]].

* ''VideoGame/ParasiteEve'' has a few moments of this, particularly concerning the visions of Maya. Such as in the first level in Carnegie Hall when Aya is traveling through the sewer, there’s dead silence besides the sound of water and no enemies that appear, making Maya’s first CreepyChild appearance akin to ''Film/TheShining'' as she appears to Aya before vanishing into thin air. A similar moment with more build up happens in TheVeryDefinitelyFinalDungeon Chrysler Building, as when Aya gets to the top the area is more and covered in creepy bio-organic growth and sludge with the 77 floor having a petal-like growth which opens to reveal... [[spoiler: Maya or more accurately the Truebred Mitochondria Eve the true FinalBoss of the game.]]

** ''Haunting Ground'' psychological horror elements also take full advantage of this trope, with many cutscenes that don’t involve any direct horror but are often so full of creepy and awful implications that they are scary regardless. Case in point, when first meeting Richardo he is playing a piano out of view and tells Fiona to uncover an object hidden by a sheet that he made for her, she does so and finds a woodcut statue [[StalkerWithATestTube of a pregnant woman]]. He doesn’t even specify his desire, for the scene to be disturbing as hell.

* ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry'': After the lights go out in Mallet Castle, its entire geography changes. You can't see more than a few feet in front of you, and the ambience doesn't help either. Of course, this is a HackAndSlash game starring a badass HalfHumanHybrid packing more than enough to take on anything thrown at him, so the effect isn't that powerful.

* ''VideoGame/DevilMayCry'': There's a giant statue of a male, three-eyed angel facing the entrance of Mallet Island castle. Examining it prompts Dante to speculate that it depicts the God that the Castellans worship. Later, after the castle becomes the DarkWorld, it disappears. [[spoiler: Guess what Mundus looks like once we finally see him?]]

* The Orz of ''VideoGame/StarControl'', a strangely cute alien race from an alien dimension, don't really fit this trope, as the whole game is set into a non horrific, rather comedic atmosphere. However in a different setting, their uncanny, overly energetic friendliness, combined with their almost incomprehensible way to talk in strange pictures, which however allows many fearsome interpretations about their true, hidden nature and desires, as well as the fact that they seemingly just eradicated a whole human subspecies from existence, without leaving any witnesses of what exactly happened and them becoming instantly hostile to anyone asking to many questions about that, the diplomatic intercourse with them would fall into this trope, as dealing with them is dealing with a danger of unfathomable nature.

*** Unfortunately, the third game reneged on this. Which is one of many reasons fans [[FanonDiscontinuity do not acknowledge]] the third game.

** The pale girl/Psychic Trainer [[RandomEncounters encounter]] From ''VideoGame/PokemonXAndY'' strongly invokes this. Upon entering the second floor of a certain building in Lumiose City, the music stops, the lights flash and a StringyHairedGhostGirl appears behind you gliding towards the bottom of the screen in a frozen walking animation and saying cryptically “No you're not the one“ before leaving the frame and disappearing. She can appear later on in a bedroom standing creepily by the wall and says “Don’t talk to me... If you do, I won’t... hear the elevator...”. Absolutely no explanation is offered in the game to exactly who or what the hell she is. Some [[WildMassGuessing speculate]] she’s an inter-dimensional traveler or a ghost, the most likely explanation is that she’s a spooky EasterEgg left by the developers.

*** Claire‘s scenario has several of these moments. For example the cutscene of Claire finding Sherry was heartfelt in the original, but is instead terrifying in the remake as when Claire tells the little girl she’s here to help, Sherry just says "You need help... -he’s behind you" and hearing footsteps and moaning Claire turns around to see the G-Creature attacking her. Or even more creepy is when Claire and Sherry are in a seemly empty carpark and Claire hears scuttering noise making her look around ''but sees nothing''. There's no indication whether it's a Cerberus, Licker or something worse. Then Claire and Sherry are ambushed [[spoiler: but by DirtyCop Chief Irons not a monster]].

* ''Phobia: The Fear of the Darkness'' (which draws inspiration from ''Penumbra'' and ''Scratches'') pulls this off extraordinarily as well as overlapping with Nothing At All. The setting is simple, you’re just a dude alone in a massive dark mansion with creaky floors, long corridors, empty rooms and one CreepyBasement but the sheer atmosphere is so pulse pounding scary that having to traverse the house is utterly nerve wrecking. Even when in the early game the scariest thing that happens is just a few doors opening by themselves and a sinister scraping noise that can be heard from the basement at night. By the time the monster does appear to roam the halls, you’re already prime to be terrified.

*** Some of the scariest background music/noises are heard in [[EmptyRoomPsych empty or dead-end rooms]]. The prison morgue has the most pants-shitting sounds in the game, including [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKrcs98ZGuw a high-pitched siren-type noise]] when you jump down the hole, but nothing to hurt you. The dead end near where you find the Seductress tablet has an empty bloodstained cell with a creepy [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aR2ONOqshBI&list=PLOEAs04auvietkxFG-8hjc80IIVBItX2r&index=34 clock-like ambient noise]].

* In ''VideoGame/ChronoCross'', the final battle against the game's EldritchAbomination is the only battle in the game without any background music. All the soundtrack offers are distorted sounds like distant crashing waves, or a mournful wind. It does a good job of heightening the tension.
** ''VideoGame/ChronoTrigger'' did this too in Magus's Castle - there's no background music when you first enter, which makes the hypnotized-seeming dialogue of the human servants [[spoiler:who are actually demons and zombies in disguise]] all the more unnerving.

*** There's no background music, but there is an unusually high-fidelity recording of children laughing in the distance. It's not quite silent, but definitely makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up.

** In ''VideoGame/AceCombatZeroTheBelkanWar'''s Mission 12, after accomplishing the first objective, [[DeusExNukina the screen flashes completely white, your HUD shows a missile warning for a few seconds]], your wingman starts shooting at you, and the background music suddenly stops.

* ''VideoGame/{{Obsidian}}'' does this fantastically for its second dream world. You go in, having heard about Max's nightmare of a mechanical spider which he had to fix, and now this world puts you in his shoes for that same purpose. When you start, the spider is offline, and the whole place is a decrepit, nonfunctioning, but fairly well-lit factory, with some eerie background music for good measure. ''Not a single human is in this factory'', no workers anywhere. Just you, the spider, and Max who wants you to open a grate that the spider is blocking with one of its feet. So your only option is to follow how the dream progressed and fix the spider. [[spoiler: But as you go along, the spider shows more and more signs of life as you "fix the whole universe surrounding it". And by the time it's finished, the thing comes alive, and after smashing scaffolds and oil barrels and trying to gnaw on a lamp pole, it drops that and charges towards you instead. ''And there's nothing you can do except watch yourself get eaten - or rather, incinerated - alive.'']] The only thing keeping you calm is the fact that, even when built by nanobots, it's still just a dream, backwards logic and all.

** The basement, particularly the filthy, dimly lit kitchen, has the same effect, aided by [[HellIsThatNoise some really unnerving background music]]. Doubly so in the remake.

* In ''VideoGame/ConkersBadFurDay'', the mansion level has plenty of zombies in most areas, zombies which, incidentally, instakill you and run fast when they see you. Some big areas are just outright empty dead ends, which is way more scarier, especially because then the background music is very clear... With children chuckling, and a brilliant minimalistic style that just makes you expect something awful is going to happen.

* In ''VideoGame/BanjoTooie,'' you explore Terrydactyland, a dinosaur-themed world. Like most of the game, it's bright and cheerful, with cartoony characters. But then you climb to the highest point of the level, and find a place called the Stomping Grounds. When you first enter, the background music stops as you look around--it's a wide open space hemmed in by walls. Sure, the colors are a little drabber, and that silence is getting deafening, but how bad could it be? Then you take a few steps forward...and a GIANT DINOSAUR FOOT EMERGES FROM THE SKY, TRYING TO CRUSH YOU, as the game's ominous boss music abruptly starts up, punctuated by a horrific-sounding roar. Banjo and Kazooie are about as big as one of the claws on the dinosaur's toes, and to make matters worse, you ''never see the entire thing''--just its foot. Somehow, imagining the rest of the Stompadon is a thousand times scarier than any depiction could be.

* The Final Trial stage from the first ''VideoGame/{{Pikmin}}'' game certainly tried to invoke this. The stage has a grand total of one (1) enemy in it, the game's final boss. However, the rest of the stage appears to be calm and peaceful (aside from the fire geysers which are just there for the sake of a Red Pikmin puzzle). There are many obstacles in the way to the Bulblax's lair which might take an average player roughly an in-game day on their first try. This entire time, they will also be hearing very unnerving background music which gives the vibe that there is something sinister hiding in this peaceful setting with them. When they finally reach the Emperor Bulblax's lair, the creature is camouflaged to resemble mossy rock with some plant life on it which might give a small jump scare to less genre savvy players when they approach it.

* ''VideoGame/ArmoredCore'': A few missions of the original game take place in poorly-lit, occasionally abandoned underground facilities with no background music. Due to the game's limitations at the time, the game would render the corridors and rooms maybe just outside the range of your weaponry; the rest of the screen would be pitch-black. In addition, one or two locations have a recurring clip of what sounds like a general advisement message that hiccups and skips back to the beginning at random intervals. And woe be to you if you don't bother putting a radar in your three-story mecha. Partially subverted by the fact that the enemy units in these missions tend to be relatively weak, but they are so few and far between in these areas that it can make you jump when you get shot walking around a corner.
** The missions with the biological weapons (creatures which shoot bullets out of their mouths, kind of look like large ants) can be especially unnerving. If they haven't invaded a facility, you're erradicating their underground nests. Again, no background music; instead, [[HellIsThatNoise you can hear them scratching on the floor as you explore]], and you are only likely to hear this if you're in an adjacent corridor/tunnel. Becomes worse when you're clearing out a nest, [[ParanoiaFuel because queens don't make a sound]] [[ClickHello until they have you in their sights]]. Can be partially subverted by equipping a radar with a bio sensor, but then, a queen still only appears as a small, red dot on radar...

###During your initial wanderings through [[spoiler:the Picus building]] it starts out completely empty, with little to no background music, but on it's very clear ''something'' bad has happened by all the locked fire-escapes and signs of a hasty evacuation. You'll be overjoyed when the bad guys come out of the woodwork - at least then you'll have something to ''hit''.

** The Room of Clocks in ''VideoGame/Castlevania64'' and its remake ''Legacy of Darkness'' combines this with SuspiciousVideogameGenerosity. It's got a save point, food, and your pick of subweapons. The only background music is the ticking of the clocks. The Room of Clocks is still one of the most unsettling and nightmarish places in the game.