Walk while ye have light, lest the darkness come upon you.
- New Testament, John XII, 35

Awakened from my sleep abruptly, my heart is racing like a jackhammer in my chest, I sit upright in my bed in attention and take in my surroundings. Through the only window in my bedroom a slither of light tries to pierce the darkness and barely manages any solidity. I've just had a bad dream and unlike the blessed people that can actually remember their dreams, I can't recall not one scrap of mine to save my life. Somehow to me that makes it worse because not only was I somehow traumatized by some unknowable that awoke me at an ungodly hour but it stole my memory of the proceedings as well.

I uncocoon myself from the blankets, set them aside and get out of the bed. I'm nine years old, enveloped in darkness minus a pinprick of light from my window and my heart feels like it's trying to escape my chest. Before I take two steps in the direction of the light switch by the door, my young fertile imagination is working overtime creating and dismissing sinister scenarios one after another until it finds the right one to enhance my fear even further. It settles on the some creature is with me but I can't see him one, that's always a winner. The light switch is only a few feet away, but in the dark, it may as well be a mile. A mile where I must avoid certain death by hungry creatures enveloped in the dark... watching, grinning, waiting to pounce at the last second and ultimately tear me to shreds.



Being quite the rational adult now, the dark doesn't have its way with me as it once did long long ago. But that primal fear is still lodged within me to this day. Sure it's manageable and in the light of day nonexistent but late at night, taking the trash up to the street for pick up in the morning, I wont lie. My pace is quickened and somewhere in the confines of my subconsciousness a lever is thrown that makes my arms create an avalanche of goosebumps for no apparent reason. The term someone walking on your grave comes readily to mind. Silly and pathetic yet it happens nevertheless.

Which is why I have always had a fondness for horror movies and especially horror games. Why? Because to me being scared, letting fear wash over you and ultimately relinquishing control to it not only gets the blood pumping, or gets the adrenaline flowing, it makes you feel truly awake. Like you're in another state altogether. Your senses are in a code red. A state of perpetual alertness. Really good horror games reach inside you and yank this feeling out of you. They do this by employing the dark and his bastard son sound to the fullest. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that just about every horror game has the dark as part of its theme. Personally I would love to see one not use darkness and try to scare the beejeezus out of me. Can't say that it's not possible but they'll have to get creative. Silent Hill may come to mind but fog replaced the dark with the same effect, by having your sense of sight eliminated or shielded, forcing you to rely more on sound. I still think about the crackling of that bloody radio when I reminisce about Silent Hill.



A perfect example of a game employing the dark correctly in my opinion was Doom 3. A game revered for its lack of light. While some hated the task of juggling their inventory between flashlight and weapon, I mean it's the future and you can't have a light attached to your gun?, I loved it. It forced you to play the game the way the developers intended. Slow, methodical and definitely jumping at every little sound the game threw your way to make you cringe and sweat. Sure the game had plenty of gotcha moments by having enemies jump at you in the dark, which is cliche but still an effective tool for most horror games to utilize. No folks to me the scarier moments that had me inching forward little by little were the growls, my own footsteps and don't get me started on those cries of babies.

If Doom 3's environments were lit up where the dark was gone, everything was bright and the sound effects where still the same, the game would cease to entertain. Doom 3 was all about the dark. Yes the creatures were cool, some more fearsome looking than others, hated those babies, but the dark made the unseen, the creatures of your imagination, fill in the part of those sounds you heard in the darkness. The creatures of my imagination were more terrifying than Carmack and Co. could muster but they had enough sense to drench you in the dark and make you an active participant of scaring yourself.

That's one of the best things about the dark. I could enter any room brightly lit by the afternoon sun, fill it with darkness and it's another story altogether. Amazing how mood changes so readily with the absence of light.

Unfortunately like film, a horror game is hard to create. Just slapping some darkness wont make an epic horror game. There is tightrope that you must walk on with the balance of a circus entertainer. On the one hand you must have your pieces, story and backdrops set, as well as giving the game player a more active role than just going from scripted piece to scripted piece. The games that truly get below your skin and fester are the ones that use the dark as a tool to unlock that nine year old you've buried deep within. The one who collapsed with relief when he got to the light switch long long ago with nary a scratch on him after the mile of evading those creatures.

The one that knows there is a reason to fear the dark.