Afraid of Monsters

Afraid of Monsters is a Horror Mod for Half-Life.

You are David Leatherhoff, a man who is addicted to pain pills that mysteriously appear in his mailbox every week, and he certainly doesn't care who's sending them. He's been suffering night terrors recently, far more brutal than simple nightmares should be.

Eventually, fed up, he checks himself into a hospital into rehab. When he goes into the bathroom, he finds the same damned pills there, and against his better judgment, pops some and blacks out in a nearby stall.

He wakes up, the hospital empty and full of abominations...

One of the more notable Half-Life Mods, mostly because it's quite frightening. Received a Spiritual Successor in the form of Cry of Fear.

This game mod demonstrates the FOLLOW the RED:

Abandoned Hospital: The first and last level.
Abandoned Hospital Awakening
Abnormal Limb Rotation Range: Demonstrated with varied success from all the humanoid enemies.
Absurdly Sharp Blade: With a few chops, a kitchen knife can cut through wood, boxes, windows, the floor of a elevator, and metal grills sealing the vents.
Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Might be difficult to notice because of the lack of light, but nevertheless big enough for zombies to live in.
Acceptable Breaks From Reality: More often than not, you can find many good things in garbage cans and containers. Things like ammunition and bottles of painkillers that give health. That is standard in games, but sometimes you also find something so rare, like functioning flashlight batteries.
- Which itself justifies why they run out so fast. The batteries David keeps finding are old and leaking
Air Vent Passageway: To escape from the Hospital, you need to go through the vents several times... especially when the elevator jams. And starts falling. To no one's surprise, there's a screamer in there.
Aliens and Monsters: Are in the city. David's drugs being the reason.
All Just a Dream: The final, good ending (the only one in the original and the fourth ending in DC) shows David OD'd in the hospital, seemingly dead, but he's successfully resuscitated by the doctors.
Always Night: The sun shines in the beginning, but after David's first nightmare, it becomes dead night. A huge contribution to the dark outdoor areas in the game. You might want to walk along those torches.
Amazing Technicolor Population: The Twitchers are often in different skintones (mostly pitch-black or blood-stained), but it is most obvious when David is in Markland Forest: Almost all of them are completely White - or invisible.
An Axe to Grind: The best melee weapon in the Director's Cut is the axe. Unfortunately, the final boss has one, too.
- To make it even worse, the final boss pulls the axe OUT OF HIS BODY.
An Aesop: Don´t do drugs.
Applied Phlebotinum: The bottles of Remedy David is addicted to.
Arc Words: "FORGIVE ME"
- "THANK YOU"
Artificial Stupidity: Sometimes the Twitchers in the hospital simply stand on the stairs, even if they have seen David. This makes it easy to do headshots.
Awesome but Impractical: The Automatic Rifles are all cool but mostly not used. The AK 47 in the original, with very little ammunition that could be used for it, is this somewhat, since you could keep it along with the shotgun. Director´s Cut plays this much more straight however, with the Submachine Gun and the Uzi. Both have very little ammunition to be found, they burst away a whole magazine worth of bullets in less than a few seconds, and it is easy to overkill a enemy if the player gets startled, getting rid of even more ammo. But worst of all: unlike the original version, weapons have to be swapped because of the weight. Which means that you have to get rid of the very useful shotgun for the Submachine Gun, and the Revolver or Desert Eagle for the Uzi. Powerful guns and tempting, but not useful in the long run.
- Before that, there's the Glock David finds in the cafeteria. More ammo capacity, but less stopping power. Pick it up, waste its magazine, then go back for your P228.
Ax Crazy: David in the bad ending(s), it's revealed he went on a psychotic rampage during his hallucination, and all those monsters he killed were people.
Battle in the Center of the Mind: The finale.
Bilingual Bonus: Not in the mod itself as much as when digging into the game files. Many of the files are titled in Swedish instead of English, and as such, anyone knowing Swedish have a interesting, and somewhat creepy time reading the titles. For example, multiple soundfiles are named "Viskningar", which means Whispers. There is also "Brutalskrik" (Brutal Scream), and Karringskrik. Karring is slang, in this case spelled without the letter Ä, that is used in the same context nowadays as Bitch. No points for guessing what they are used for.
Black Bug Room: The nightmare in the beginning and the others that appear through the game. Depending on how you play, however, the whole experience might been a nightmare.
Black Eyes of Evil: David's doppelgänger.
- Most of the zombies. In the Director's Cut, the dogs and ghosts, too.
Blackout Basement: a basement later in the game is constantly flickering, and inhabited by zombies. The hospital garage and having to plunge the hospital into darkness may count.
Blatant Item Placement
Block Puzzle: The one when you have to know the barrel down in the water and then jump on.
Bloodless Carnage: You´ll find blood more often smeared on the walls as part of the scenery than spilled from killed enemies, as they don´t bleed. Justified, in that it is all David's hallucinations.
Bloody Handprints: frequently found in the hospital, but especially all over where the barricade used to be after you cut the power.
Body Armor as Hit Points: Unless you play Director's Cut, because then armor is completely removed.
Body Horror: The zombies start out as at least fairly humanoid, then turn worse...
Bottomless Pits: If you do not follow the red dots in the nightmares, you arguably fall and die in a black void.
Broken Bridge: Not the literal type. Several paths are locked or not possible to take unless a key has been found.
- A more traditional case occurs in Director's Cut; David needs to open a car trunk with a key to find a rope, which he uses to climb a stone fence surrounding an apartment.
Bug Buzz: You can hear insects and frogs in the forest, depending on which route the player has taken in the apartment complex.
Chaos Architecture: Anytime David drops into his psyche - especially the last levels.
Cold Turkeys Are Everywhere: The pills, which, ironically, are needed to survive.
Color-Coded for Your Convenience: An early puzzle/back-track quest went as such: If the button is surrounded by green light, it opens the green door. If the button shines red, it opens the red door, and same for blue.
Crate Expectations
Creative Closing Credits: In Director´s Cut, the credits are on many TV monitors, spread around in a dark room, and shown as the camera dramatically pans into them one by one while Aphex Twins's "Heart of it All" plays in the background.
- Also counts as a Nostalgia Heaven moment, since in the original Afraid of Monsters, the TV monitors were used to explain how to play the game in the training level.
  - Averted by the original, however, since it consisted of one sentence: "Mod by Andreas Ronnberg (ruMpel)"
Creepy Basement: David must venture into one and turn off the electricity in the Hospital. It gets significantly scarier when he tries to get out.
Creepy Cemetery: In Markland Forest.
Damn You, Muscle Memory!: Or lack of thereof. Directors Cut forces the player to press the Use key to pick up weapons and items, whereas in the original the player just had to walk over the items to collect them. The mechanic was most likely implemented so that players would not replace and re-replace their weapons every time they happened to walk over them (see Hyperspace Arsenal.)
Deadly Lunge: The very much alive skulls do a leap attack when David is close enough.
- As do hunchbacked zombies in the forest.
Death Trap: In one of David's Nightmares, he has to send a chained man into a wall with spikes. If he's not careful before the hallucination entering the forest, he'll be dropped into a jail cell, and smacked by a zombie until he dies.
Deus Ex Machina: When the Boss battle with David's doppelgänger begins, the only weapon capable of killing him, a spear, lies at the end of the room on a bench, waiting to be picked up. He thankfully averts becoming an Anticlimax Boss, because even with the weapon, he is challenging.
- It makes sense, though, when you consider that David is basically thinking "I am taking control of my own fate", and promptly created the only thing capable of stopping himself, this was at the point he tried to be in control of his thoughts.
Die, Chair, Die!
Directors Cut: More like an Updated Rerelease, but hey.
Disgusting Public Toilet: Actually quite nice at first... until a ghost draws the alphabet in blood on it.
Distracted by the Sexy: A specific door leads to a changing room for men, that has posters on the wall featuring suggestively clad women. They can be seen after opening the door. But enter the room for a closer look however, and three Zombies will smash out of the lockers next to David.
- Justified in the Let's Play Developer Commentaries made by ruMpel, where he states that it was suppose to be a changing room for workers there and the like.
Don't Go in The Woods
Doomed Protagonist: David, unless you get the 4th ending.
Down the Drain: The Sewer under the city. One of the rare Scary videogame examples.
Downer Ending: Only the first three endings in Director's Cut, wherein David finds that he went on a psychotic mass murder, is questioned, and hangs himself out of guilt in his prison cell.
Driven to Suicide: In the third ending.
Drop the Hammer: A ball hammer, the second melee weapon you can grab in DC.
Drugs Are Bad: Yes.
Dummied Out: Director's Cut had the Grenades, the monster fish, and the Body Armor removed, which the original version had. One can also find many unused Aphex Twin tracks in the files, that were apparently supposed to play while the mod loaded the next area.
Earn Your Happy Ending: In both games, David manages to fight off his addiction and wake up from his overdose.
Enemy Chatter: Averted, unlike Half-life and its other mods. All enemies are quiet until they attack you.
Escape From the Crazy Place: A feeling caused by the hospital. But even after that, the whole world appears crazy.
Everybody's Dead David
Evil Counterpart: In Director´s Cut.
Excuse Plot: Word of God stated in an interview he was very well aware of it.
- "I didn't decide the story yet and I wanted monsters in the mod. So I added drugs in the story so he could hallucinate his enemies."

--Andreas Rönnberg

Faceless Goons: You might encounter a Zombie wearing a plastic bag over his head. Literal examples are more frequent however.
Fade to Black: Used as a transition when crossing the lake on the boat.
Fade to White: True to the trope, it occurs when you finally kill the last boss. In the original mod, it occurs when you escape.
Fantastic Drug: "Remedy", the painkillers David's addicted to, is apparently quite powerful. So powerful, they give you nightmares that can actually kill you!
Fingerless Gloves
Footprints of Muck: Leading to one of the toilets. More varied examples appear latter on.
Foreboding Architecture: Several, especially in the sewers. If it's a long hallway, you're guaranteed a screamer.
Get on the Boat: There is an boat David has to use to cross a lake in the forest. You might or might not find it in Director´s Cut.
Ghost City: Complete with angry ghosts AND zombies. And, occasionally, ghost zombies.
Gotta Catch Them All: The pieces of the code, for the fourth ending.
Grimy Water: The sewer water. There is a giant black fish swimming in it, but was removed in DC.
Guide Dang It: It's extremely easy to lose your way in the hospital in either version after the blackout happens.
- The flashlight in Director´s Cut doesn't recharge, unlike the original. You better have a good quicksave on hand if you run out in certain areas.
Hand Cannon: The Desert Eagle and Revolver. Subverted, in which you'll often have to fight off more than one twitching zombie, it becomes slightly less useful. And contrary to horror fans' expectations, having a Desert Eagle or revolver in your hands does not make your enemies any less pants-wettingly terrifying.
Haunted House: The mansion in Markland Forest, with its flashing images of people and Invisible Zombies.
Healing Potion: The pain killers you find strewn about levels. Deconstructed, as they're the reason you're seeing these horrible things to begin with.
Hearing Voices: More or less through the whole game, random voices start whispering. Sometimes one can understand what they say, but more often than not it is gibberish. Also, they were made using Microsoft Sam...
- ... In contrast to our Heroic Mime, and all human characters, whose dialogues are in text only without voicework.
Heartbeat Soundtrack: Often induced at a certain event, like a blackout.
Humanoid Abomination: The Twitchers and the tangled up monsters made of several limbs (Abominations).
- The Abomination enemy actually came out as an experimental foe when Minuit (the DC Co-Creator) began experimenting with the different enemy models (in this case, a variant of the Alien Slave Model)
Hyperspace Arsenal: Averted in Director´s Cut. There are four weapon slots that can only take one weapon each; An melee weapon, a pistol, a handcannon, and a rifle. When David finds a new pistol, for instance, he has to replace the older weapon if he wants to pick it up.
Immune to Bullets: The final boss.
Improbable Age: The creator of the Mod, Andres "ruMpel" Rönnberg was 12 years old when he began work on it and 14 when it was finished.
Infernal Retaliation: When he has taken enough hits, the final boss becomes temporarily engulfed in flames that damages David over time.
Infinity+1 Sword: A weapon only obtained after beating all 4 endings is found in the hospital with the bathroom with letters. It's an L 85 A 2 with infinite ammo, high rate of fire, devastating stopping power, and a scope. Ladies and Gentlemen, meet the GM_General
- And it's the only weapon practical for a Muzzle Flashlight.
Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: You cannot climb over or crawl under the barrier that prevents you from going up from the hospitals Parking garage.
Interface Screw: Being it by an Abomination turns the screen red and only white noise is heard for a few seconds.
Invisible Monsters: The Bleeding Specters. Their faces flash yellow when they are laughing and attacking from range. At one point, even the Zombies become invisible
Invisible Wall: Rarely found, but the aforementioned barrier and some stairs have them.
Journey to the Center of the Mind: Your ultimate enemy in the game? Yourself. The last levels completely leave reality and into David's head, where he must fight off even more disfigured zombies in a twisted void.
Jump Scare: All over the place. In places where you expect it, and places where you least expect it. Some are enemies, and thanks to how fast and damaging they are, expect to die the first time around. The worst is the subway attack. Hope you know where the turnstiles are.
Lock and Key Puzzle: The TNT puzzle in the sewers. Requires you to go into a darkened highrise, and... yeah.
Locked Door: Unlocked by buttons. On beds!
Lost Forever: There is a axe in the shack in the Markland Forest. Gather the courage to walk in it before jumping down the well, or you miss out on the most powerful melee weapon in the game.
- If you miss a single letter containing the code to the fourth ending, the happy end is completely out of reach, until you find that paper by replaying the mod again. Painful enough by itself, but are you willing to put yourself through all that fear again?!'
Made of Iron: A Twitcher might sometimes survive a point-blank shotgun blast to the head.
Malevolent Architecture
The Man Behind the Monsters: Leatherhoff himself.
The Maze: Director´s Cut has a second Nightmare sequence, when David falls asleep while driving a car, that is a labyrinth. In order to get through it, you have to follow the roadsigns while defending yourself from zombies. If you go the wrong way, the ground crumbles under David and he falls into a prison to get torn apart by zombies. When you have finally reached the end of the labyrinth, David wakes up to the sound of the car crashing into a tree. Welcome to Markland Forest...
Mind Screw: The beginning of the end. Yes. You go through the hospital from the first level, that has in fact been turned sideways, and all the rooms are spinning in their own directions. The chairs and tables are your new substitute for platforms, and do not even dare to follow anything but the red dots. And then you get to the drawings...
Mono-Gender Monsters: The Zombies/Twitchers are all men, while the flying ghosts (those that resemble humans) appear as women.
Monster Closet: So many of them.
Mook Chivalry: Accidentally occur any time you come across a bunch of Twitchers in a tight hallway. In wide-open areas they all attack at once.
Mooks but No Bosses: The original version had no endgame enemy, unlike Directors Cut.
Multiple Endings: Four, but the first three are actually a sequence, they're showing David's discovery of what he's done (i.e., go on a psychotic rampage that killed a bunch of people and not monsters, his interrogation, and, ultimately, his suicide. The fourth, however, shows hope, where instead, he's suffered from an OD and doctors are working to save him, and he survives.
- Moreover, to get the fourth ending, you actually need to see the other three endings.
- To be more precise, you have to find scattered letters with numbers in the game, which are combined into a single long code. But after leaving the hospital, the levels branch off in different multiple directions. Depending on which route you take, he ends up with a different ending. In all of the locations, these scattered pieces of the code exist, which the player has to memorize. Close to the game's finale, there is a room in David's last nightmare in which he is supposed to press in this code, and a new path opens to the fourth and happy ending. Assuming you dare to replay the game two times more.
Musical Spoiler: Midway through the sewer under the city, creepy music suddenly starts playing. Then the Zombies come.
Never Bring a Knife to A Fist Fight: Inverted. When one has run out of ammunition, the Knife is the must-use weapon against the punching zombies, until you find either the hammer or the axe.
Nightmare Face: The faces of the ghosts that appear, and almost all enemies have them. Some even use the faces as weapons.
Nightmare Sequence: Many of them.
Night of the Living Mooks
Nothing Is Scarier: At the beginning of the mod, David gets attacked literally less than ten seconds after finding a gun, from behind, no less, in a sudden bum rush. In Director´s Cut, however, no monsters appear until David shuts off the electricity in the hospital's basement, some good fifteen minutes of exploring later... and you have to fight the first monsters that appear in pitch darkness. Players who had tried the original version first were experiencing nothing short of Absolute Paranoia when DC was released.
Not Using the Z Word: The developers call them Twitchers.
Ominous Fog: In a few parts of the city, such as the park.
Ominous Walk: The first thing David's doppelgänger does when they meet. Trying to damage him only results in self-damage. David has to run away from him until he gets cornered in the Boss Room for the final showdown, where he finds the conveniently placed Spear: the doppelgänger's only weakness.
One-Man Army: David, being the only human alive against his living hallucinations, kills many of them through his journey.
Our Monsters Are Weird: There are skulls with hands stuffed in their mouths that attack with a leap. The Dogs are either crimson red, or anatomically correct but have a shaved human head with a single eyesocket. If you hear constant strange noises on a outdoor level, look up: Chances are that you find levitating Aliens that are trying to blast you to death with ghostly Faces. There are also gigantic invisible faces that laugh like children if they see David. In the regular mod, they were fleshy-reskinned Half-Life monsters, leading to Ghost Aliens that Shoot Bees.
- Our Zombies Are Different: Twitchy, Silent Hill things that get worse as David falls deeper into the hallucination (they later show up with hammerheads, claws, or tools for arms, as well as completely disfigured or injured faces if their head isn't some sort of hideous black shape). They can break through walls and burst through lockers when David walks close enough. A few of the Zombies hide behind doors and staircases. If possible, they will only show up when it is dark. Their running speed varies for each one of them, so fighting them with melee weapons can be very difficult - even when it's outright encouraged. Some of them walk on their hands and spit at you, as if they were scorpions. They even learn to duck, to avoid bullets while they attack. If this showcase of unique behavior was not enough, Some of them are invisible too.
- In DC, the badly-skinned Voltigaunts are replaced with... hideous blob-things (they're actually glitched zombies, but purposely done). They poison you for a couple of seconds (accompanied by a white noise filter and a ringing effect in your ears.)
Parking Garage: More Jump ScBEEEEEEEEEEEP
Phlebotinum Overdose: David's hallucinations by the pills sets the world into chaos while he is passed out.
Pipe Maze: One room requires the player to get to the button by jumping over and crawling under pipes.
Point of No Return: Escaping the Hospital via the air ducts makes it impossible to go back in. There are several more of these in Director´s Cut. After going through one of the branching paths after escaping the hospital, the other paths become locked out. Depending on the path chosen, it is possible for David to take a car and drive away from the city, without being able to return because he crashes into a tree. The final time this trope kicks in is during the final dream, when David must either type the code to 4heaven, or continue in the opposite direction to face a Downer Ending. All of it, depending on what directions you go.
Primal Fear: The darkness. There is quite A LOT of it in the game. Lord help you if you run out of flashlight batteries.
Purple Prose: "Don't let the Devil torture the God. Kill the Devil, and let the God show you the way.". This is a hint given in order to progress in the game, so what does it mean? Destroy the columns holding up the ball-shaped statue. It will fall and break through the closed well under it, which you will climb down.
Respawning Enemies: In Director´s Cut. Where and when they spawn however, is random.
The Reveal: Two. The first is: the Monsters you've been killing? People, and dogs. The second: your enemies in the game was never the "Monsters", it was yourself and your addiction to the Pain Pills.
Roar Before Beating: Every enemy. In fact, you have no idea it is a Zombie you are up against the first time, because of the messed up noises they make.
Room Full of Crazy: The hospital has the toilet, and the corridor with the electric cables blocking the path. The toilet is not important to progress, but the second is.
- The corridor is not odd at first (aside from the obvious electric and highly dangerous cables). There is a message written on a Notebook nearby, however, asking David to turn off the electricity in the basement so the problem can be fixed. If David exits the corridor but returns without turning of the electricity, the picture on the wall has been put down to the ground, and there is a bloodprint on the wall. After finally causing the blackout and returning, the walls are scribbled with THANK YOU written all over them.
- Actually, the bathroom holds importance once you have acquired all 4 endings. Or to be more specific, it is the room where you acquire the GM _General
Rule of Scary
Scare Chord: Every time a part of the code required to get the true ending is found. Also, the end track, Aphex Twin's NIN remix of "At the Heart of it All", counts.
Scenery Gorn: Every level ever, but especially David's nightmare levels.
Screamer Trailer: The trailer for Director's Cut. Though it uses TV static instead of screams.
Screaming Woman: The nightmare sequences have many screams without sources, and many of the ghosts later on in the game scream just for the sake of fear.
Scripted Event: Like the game the mod was build upon, Afraid of Monsters uses scripted events a lot. Almost all of them in order to scare the player.
Shock and Awe: Another attack of the final boss is striking lightning at David. The attack recharges every ten seconds.
Shotguns Are Just Better: Played straight in both the original and Director´s Cut. It is the first two-handed weapon found, and usually most enemies run straight at David, making easy targets for the Shotgun's spread. Ammo's also plentiful.
Shout-Out: One of the zombie models wears a Mario hat. It's... hard to see until you kill it.
- Neutral Milk Hotel's album cover is a painting in the hospital.
Sinister Scraping Sound: The Nightmare David experiences early on has this, with the noise apparently coming from the walls.
- Hey, what's that noise in the elevator shaft? OH SHIIIII-
Sinister Subway: Let´s just say there is lots to see here.
Sliding Scale of Linearity vs. Openness: The Level 3 variant.
Sliding Scale of Realistic Versus Fantastic: Surreal. Big time.
Sniper Pistol: All the handguns have very good accuracy. You do not get to take advantage of it often though.
Soft Water: You can jump down the wells with shallow water in the mod with ease, unless they are dried out.
Spiritual Successor: Cry Of Fear. Another Half-Life Mod being developed by Andreas Ronnberg featuring gameplay similar to AoM:DC, new weapons, New Storyline, A new Inventory System, A new Save System, And Full Cutscenes. To Learn more visit the official website or its ModDB Page.
Splash Damage: The grenades in the original had splash damage.
Spooky Painting: All the paintings in the game are either creepy from the beginning, or they vastly transform when it gets dark. The mansion in particular has many of them, and at one point even the Mona Lisa gets to frighten the player.
Standard FPS Guns
Surreal Horror: Take a read through this whole article. The Mod would be summarized up as this combined with Psychological Horror.
Teleporting Keycard Squad: Also when David changes something in the area overall. Like the lightning.
Ten-Second Flashlight: The flashlight recharges slowly over time when it is not in use. In Director´s Cut, however, it needs Batteries to work. Hope you like wandering around in the dark if you like wasting energy.
There Was a Door: Done several times by the enemies, as scares.
Tragic Hero: David's addiction is the cause.
Uncanny Valley: Deliberately invoked with all the Twitchers.
Units Not to Scale: The bottles of painkillers throughout the mod are as big as Pickle jars.
Unusually Uninteresting Sight: David will make a remark whenever he tries to open a locked door or find usable objects in the game, but never says anything about all the hallucinations running amok around him - probably because he's used to seeing them by the time the game's events occur.
Unwinnable By Mistake: To get in the bottom floor of the hospital, that could be described as another basement, David has to jump down a broken elevator. Then he can press the button in a room a few meters away that unlocks the other door that leads out, and the door to the next button across the building. The thing is, that the door out of the bottom floor closes after him when he walks out, with no way of opening it again. So if the player jumps down the elevator again after pressing the button, he is stuck. He cannot get out because the door is locked, and he cannot get out the way he came.
- This was fixed in Director's Cut, when the whole hospital was redesigned.
Updated Rerelease: After Afraid of Monsters's release, Director´s Cut was made, and added a ludicrous amount of content. New weapons, better graphics, new monsters, new levels, old levels redesigned, new scares, new music, new twists, a boss fight, four different endings, new flashlight, redesigned models, more types of zombies, more nightmare sequences. The fandom was pleased.
Up to Eleven: The Weapon used against the final boss. If you attempt to use it via the weapon menu, you notice that the whole window is Full of different symbols, that actually don´t tell you what it is until you click.
Videogame Set Piece: Several.
The Walls Have Eyes: All the nightmares have them.
Wham! Line: "No, not the innocent! The enemy!" Which is you, by the way.
What Do You Mean It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: And How!
Where It All Began: Depending on the choices, David returns to the hospital in his final nightmare. A very twisted version of it, that is.
Your Mind Makes It Real: All the nightmares can cause death, and even after them there are still breathing walking hallucinations that break down the environment in one way or the other. Truly some effective painkillers David found himself.
Zerg Rush: One in the subway area, and Directors Cut added a second one in the forest.