Why Players Are Creeped Out by Garry’s Mod
Garry's Mod, a sandbox game built in Valve's Source engine, is a ridiculously fun game that lets players mess around with a wide range of fun tools. While many players will remember their time building structures and playing with physics fondly, others have begun to uncover a much more creepy side to the Source sandbox game. Thanks to the rise of liminal space horror, a lot of Garry's Mod maps have begun to take on an eerie atmosphere that's best described as uncanny.
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A similar sensation has been talked about with empty multiplayer lobbies. Typically, these game worlds are meant to be inhabited by dozens of players. When there's only one person online, however, they're left alone with the ambient background noises of the game. There's an uncanny feeling that there should be things there, but they're missing. It's that off feeling that a lot of players report feeling in certain Garry's Mod levels.
The Uncanny Feeling of Garry's Mod Maps
One such level is the classic gm_construct. Construct is one of two default maps that come with Garry's Mod. While it varies from version to version, Construct typically features a wide open space of grass, some hills, three buildings that sit close together, and a far-off skyscraper. The skybox for this map is a blue sky with buildings on the horizon, making this map feel like a mix between a constructed area and a Half-Life 2-style city.
One important feature of Construct is the interior areas. One of the buildings nearby the spawn area has two incredibly dark areas that reduce the player's visibility to almost nothing. The first is a dark tunnel that eventually exits out by one of the map's borders. The second is a completely pitch-black room, located in the basement nearby a similarly-eerie all-white room. The ambient soundscape of Construct cuts out when inside buildings, which leaves players both in the dark and in silence when they explore these locations.
These areas have creeped players out for so long that they've inspired several horror-themed spinoff maps, such as Steam user Lucia's Haunted GM_Construct. However, it's not just the dark halls that creep players out. It's the fact that players can hear signs of life in the ambient soundscape, but there's no one else around. When playing alone without spawning any NPCs, this unsettling feeling of things just not quite right slowly sinks in, no matter the map.
In many ways, it almost feels Garry's Mod maps are the aftermath of some kind of disaster where everyone in a location just vanished, all at once. There are still signs of life, like noises or decorated props, but not a single person. Some creators have capitalized on this by creating post-apocalyptic maps such as gm_shambles, rp_ashville, and Waystation. None of these maps are directly horror, instead using the atmosphere to creep out players.
The Still Horror of Nextbots in Garry's Mod
That unsettling atmosphere makes the recent trend of Nextbots even more terrifying. While much of Garry's Mod creepiness is because of a lack of NPCs, Nextbots are an exception. They are solid images that use a unique AI code to chase down players, with many Nextbots being unique from each other in how they maneuver maps. Not all Nextbots are the solid image kind, but those particular ones have gotten very popular recently due to YouTube videos of people being chased by them.
Most Nextbots are still images of faces that keep unnerving expressions as they chase players around the map. The AI they use allows them to do things like jump, climb and even teleport if the player gets too far away. This keeps up the chase and makes the player never quite feel safe. Since it only takes a single touch to kill a player, it only takes one bad move to spell disaster. Nextbots provide a much more imminent fear compared to the general creepy atmosphere that the maps possess.
It's likely that atmosphere inspired people to create a more straightforward threat for the game. Both Nextbots and maps also share a common trait when it comes to why they are scary. They're both in that uncanny area of being just familiar enough to register as something familiar, but the part that's off is unnerving enough to make the familiar feel scary. The emotionless 2D faces of Nextbots are familiar enough to be recognizable, but different enough from both what's being recognized and the surrounding 3D world to be creepy, even without them chasing the player.
Garry's Mod is not meant to be a scary game, especially when players are filled with servers duplicating melons and firing ragdolls around on rockets. Strip away the fun and the chaos, however, and all that's left is the feeling of something that's obviously missing. Whether it's signs of life or other players, that uncanny sensation is why so many players have begun to find the game so scary. The sandbox nature of the game means that mapmakers and modders can take that absent feeling and amplify it in different ways.
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