A game that made me jump was Return to Wolfenstein - some moments in that are just very surprising, not really a freightnening game. A really creepy game is Silent Hill, disturbing and some really well designed monsters make it much more scary than Res Evil. The original Res Evil on the PSX was pretty scary, in an old zombi flick kinda style, much more freaky mansion than the recent 'Ohh look, your at the Umbrella factory again (insert sarcastic yawn)'.
I must say though, don't try and get inspiration from videogames. Look into the artwork of H.R.Geiger, watch Aliens, and watch The Crow - try and get as much gothic imagery as you can from the net too - go for dark scenes but do it in your own way.
*While I'm here, a couple of considerations:
This is very doable in DBPro; dancing siloutes against a wall, fairly simple to do but it would make for a very creepy scene - expecially with some tribal music - maybe there's nothing there when you actually look at the fire (or light source).
*Graffiti is a really good level design trick, it creates a creepy atmosphere and is relatively accessible to anyone with a decent art package, the sort of texturing that you'll enjoy doing and is great for horror games.
*Sound effects, get a lot of weird little sounds, like metallic chinks and squeky woodwork - sound plays an enormous part in horror games, you can use it to great effect just before a key part of the plot, build up the suspense slowly and the player won't be able to stop playing till they find out what that noise was.
Van-B
The nature of Monkey was irrepressible!.
