I’ll focus the first section of my survey on enemies, sounds and non-player characters. The way I’m thinking of doing this section is presenting it in a similar fashion to my first one – Allowing users to “rate” statements I’ll write in from 1 (least) to 5 (most scary). I feel that’ll be a more appropriate medium rather than providing a yes/no answer or simply allowing text answers, as that’d potentially take a very long time to collate and may simply put people off answering.
These are what I’ll be presenting people with:
- Knowing if there are enemies in the area
- Not knowing if there are enemies in the area
- Hearing a sound you associate with an enemy (Such as their footsteps or a growl)
- Hearing said sound move closer to you, without seeing anything
- Not knowing if whatever is giving off the sound is following/pursuing you
- Knowing that an enemy is following you
- An enemy that is slower than you, but will never stop following you
- An enemy that is faster than you, but will stop following you if it loses sight of you
- An enemy you can fight back against, but can kill you very quickly
- An enemy you can’t fight back against, but takes longer to kill you
- Any comments the person would like to share (As an optional field)
With these various statements, I’ll be able to test for various scenarios regarding sounds and NPC’s – If people find unbeatable enemies that struggle to get to the player, or those that can be killed but can also kill you easily, how players react to the unknown, the effect of sounds and noises on them, and the effect being followed will have on the player.
I anticipate that the knowledge you are being followed will be a particularly powerful tool, adding pressure as well as well as stress on the player.