I've been on a horror film kick lately, and in the past couple of weeks I finally got around to watching both the Japanese and American versions of Dark Water (the latter of which I watched earlier tonight).  This isn't really a post about those films, however, so for those of you that haven't seen them yet, I won't speak of them in much detail.  Instead, what I'm writing about is a question that these films and others have brought to mind.

Namely, is it possible to create a horror video game that isn't either based around the concept of fighting or fleeing from omnipresent foes?  In Resident Evil, Silent Hill, and Fatal Frame, antagonists of various sorts are constantly lurking around, and the player needs to fight back with the game's choice of weapons.  Clock Tower is a bit more unique in that the majority of the time is spent actively running away and hiding from the enemy, but  the threat of imminent death is always one wrong step away.

So what if you got rid of all of the monsters?  What if there were a game that required the player to explore a mansion from the perspective of a Fatal Frame game that didn't have ghosts constantly phasing out of the woodwork to kill you?  What if you were locked in a mansion and were forced to solve a mystery within a given time limit, such as twelve hours, and that death would only come once that time is up?  Sure, there could still be ghostly presences, unsettling noises, and so on, but the only real threat to life and limb is failing to make the time limit.  I could imagine the scares starting out very small, but as time passes and the game comes closer to the fateful hour, the scares and general creepiness would grow stronger, further intensified by the player's own stress in meeting the deadline.

Am I the only person that would want to see a game like this, or is this something that others might want to play?  Would it even be possible for such a game to truly be effective?  I'd like to hear some thoughts on this.