Awhile ago, over at F:AT, Michael Barnes wrote a wonderful article about horror games in which he observed that he's never actually felt scared while playing one. I had never really thought about that before. I've played fantasy games where I felt I was on an epic quest, and I've played Sci-Fi games were I could almost feel the blaster bolts whizzing by my head. But fear in a horror game? Well, I have admired the creepy art in such games, and there has been tension in some dice rolls, but, I had to admit, I've never felt scared. Of course horror games, you might reasonably point out, are played with friends in well lit rooms. How can you possibly expect to experience fear? Yet I have felt actual fear during role playing games under the same room conditions when the GM gets the atmosphere just right. So I began to think about games that really did scare me, and was surprised to find that I could not only think of several such games, but that many of them were made for children.

Humans have many fears, with fear of death being the Big Kahuna. Most of us aren’t interested in playing Russian Roulette, however, so horror games usually shoot for fear of having your character die. But so what? This basically translates into fear of having your plans ruined, and, in a broader sense, this feeling is true of any game. But there are many other pressure points of human fear that can be manipulated by a clever designer. Some (perhaps many) of these fears are even unintentionally generated.

This list explores non horror games that really scare people. Feel free to add your own phobia.