This game may seem like just a creepy walk through the woods, but when it does descend into some pure horror it does so with aplomb.
- The entire concept of a Year Walk. Basically, you have to go an entire day without speaking to or acknowledging anyone and you aren't allowed to eat, drink, or set eyes on a fire, and then when it hits midnight you just start walking. No goal or finish line other than a supposed vision of the future, and no guarantees that you'll even make it out in one piece. A lot of real life Walkers didn't come back from it, and of the ones that did, some did not like what they saw. Made worse in that two of the three days one could go on a Year Walk are in the dead of winter, making death by hypothermia just as likely as death by cosmic horror.
- The jump scares in this game are actually quite effective because of how infrequent and out of the blue they are. Of note;
- The Huldra's scare is easily the most memorable of the game, what with her Nightmare Face and the scare being a major case of Mood Whiplash given her otherwise peaceful behavior.
- Going back to the windmill during the Myling Fetch Quest and rotating the gears in there will cause Stina's face to flash onscreen with an accompanying Scare Chord. The Prophet Eyes also serve as Foreshadowing of her fate.
- The Church Grim is the last scare of this nature in the game, but it still remains effective because after it happens there is no cool down from it. You have to interact with it to finish the game, and until you do it will just stand there and stare.
- All of the creatures in this game are taken from Swedish folklore, and they did not mess around when it came to making up monsters. Of note:
- The Huldra is easily the most benign of the bunch, appearing to be a forest spirit of some sort and taking the form of a pretty woman with some twigs and flowers in her hair. Not necessarily evil, just a bit disquieting considering she doesn't talk to you and slowly leads you towards a tree. This makes her Face–Heel Turn in the form of a jarring Jump Scare all the more terrifying, because she gave pretty much no reason to fear her up to that point. The companion app also mentions that she operates on Blue-and-Orange Morality and sometimes takes blood sacrifices from people to the point of draining them dry.
- The Brook Horse is an exceptionally disturbing Beast Man with a horses head on a snappily dressed human body. According to legend this creature would lure children to their watery graves by allowing them to ride on its back before jumping into a stream. Thankfully he doesn't do this to you, but he does serve an equally awful purpose: sending you on a fetch quest for four Mylings, which are the souls of dead babies that were drowned. And yes, this is absolutely necessary to proceed.
- The Night Raven is more of an annoyance considering he steals an important Plot Coupon from you, but he's truly scary because he isn't what you think he is. That tiny crow that stole the key isn't the Night Raven; the real one is a man sized corvid thing that is living inside of the crow. According to legend if a Night Raven landed on a home then someone inside it would die of an awful fever.
- The Church Grim introduces himself with a Jump Scare and appears to be a large robed human with the head of a goat. It also proves that Nothing Is Scarier by not doing a single thing other than staring at you while you muster up what little courage you may have to interact with it. It's only when you do this that you see it is only a goat head, as its robes hide the beating heart of the universe.
- Theodor Almsten's journal is just chock full of terror, and the fact that it is presented like the writings of someone who actually worked on the game and was driven mad by doing the research on it only makes the game that much scarier in hindsight. Even worse is that there is no closure on his story; we just know that he went back to the village, sat in the old house, and then his journal ends with two bone-chilling words: "It's Midnight."
