Maybe you were better off not knowing what was making those scratching sounds...
There is a lot to make you twitch in this game.- The atmosphere in the house, to begin with. The water isn't working and neither is the electricity, leaving the player to walk around a creaky old Victorian house in dim light. Just heading up to the attic will make the player question if that's such a good idea.
- The soundtrack, in general. It sets an unsettling, creepy mood a little too well, and depending on how long it plays because the player is stuck, it can easily head into the Hell Is That Noise territory.
- One of the worst times is when the player is simply exploring the house in the beginning. Some dark, but not too creepy music playing. Very sombre. And then you enter the African room, where the music suddenly stops... and then starts playing a much creepier tone that sounds like drums and chanting. It immediately makes it clear that this room is weird. Oh yeah, and those drums also keep playing every time you enter the place, like one of Milton's notes describes.
- Probably the most terrifying song in the game is "The Lurker"
. Not only does it start out with a "Psycho" Strings Jump Scare, but it plays during one of the most terrifying parts of the game: Seeing Robin through the furnace.
- The nightmares Michael suffers from. Especially the second one, after he opens the sealed room and finds the mask is missing. It's very short, but when leaving the room, the door begins to open and there is the expected Jump Scare of the mask, being worn by someone standing outside the door, staring at you.
- The basement. That entire fucking basement.
- Firstly, it's rather dark down there, so going into it is already a task that you don't want to do.
- Secondly, that huge furnance decorating the entire length of a wall. Even Michael admits that it's creepy, because of its large size and menacing appearance.
- Thirdly, the creepy, high-pitched music that sounds like wind going through a tunnel. It makes the player's hairs stand up. Worst is when you go into the basement and no music is playing. You are just waiting for something to jump out at you.
- The paintings in the house, which at best are eerie and at worst are genuinely nightmarish. The second floor hallway is particularly full of the latter sort of painting.
- The scratching noises at night. More so, since they are heard in Michael's room and he mentions them getting louder when he steps to the fireplace.
- Blackwood's journal entries when talking about the African war tribe. His description of having seen them eating one of their own is disgusting, despite using rather neutral ways of writing about it. Especially about how the one being eaten never said a word, which made the sound of the others tearing him apart more audible.
- On Monday, you actually get to climb inside that creepy furnace, slowly echoing with your tumbling through it but stopping short of seeing a door through a hole in the wall at the end. Seems like your next space to progress to somehow. Then someone or something moves beyond the door and there's nowhere to go but slowly crawl back out despite your urge to ditch as soon as possible. Even worse, that's your final objective to reach; you've inevitably got to return to the belly of the beast.
- The crypt. It's a bit better lit than the other areas, but it's still a crypt. The lower floor is darker and at least one of the caskets is slightly open, giving a glimpse at a decaying cat inside. And yes, the player has to open one of the caskets and get a nice, clean look at a corpse. Then you realize that one of the casket's is empty, meaning James Blackwood is likely alive.
- The corpse inside the casket, too. First thought to be Catherine Blackwood, it turns out to be someone else: Christopher Milton. Whom James Blackwood locked into the crypt years ago. Milton was locked up and doomed to slowly starve to death...
- The Chapel, even if it's possibly the most well lit place of the game, the music makes a terrific job in setting the tension in it, the towering wooden statue of Jesus is quite unsettling, and the hidden room beneath the altar, filled with books and stuff from the occult doesn't help either. Even more unsettling, one of the books is "De Vermis Mysteriis", implying Scratches takes place in the same universe as the Cthulhu Mythos.
- The deep laughter resonating through the house towards the end of the game.
- After using the amulet on the African mask, things take on a more serene atmosphere in the house, and calming, almost triumphant, music begins to play instead. And then you approach the entryway and the music changes. And there are the scratching noises again.
- The ending: After Michael finds the secret room in the basement, he encounters what's unmistakably a prison cell, by the signs of it someone or something has been kept here for a long time and has been trying to get out, Michael peers into a gaping hole in the wall and sees a pair of glowing eyes staring back at him, then a hideous monster with a misshapen face jumps at him and chases him out of the cell.
