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What better way to put a fresh and hardcore spin on Minecraft than with some scary mods? No, I’m not talking cheesy jump scares, but mods that tweak or fundamentally change the way you play the game. How about a sanity meter? Or maybe you want nighttime and the ocean to be scarier. Even a slight change to the atmosphere of Minecraft can make the idea of spelunking send a shiver down your spine!
[Updated on April 19 – Replaced mod list with more hardcore-centric picks.]
Hardcore Darkness
To me, it’s not quite enough to throw in a scary monster and call it a day. If you’re going to install the scariest Minecraft mods, you need to set the mood. The Hardcore Darkness mod will help you truly feel that fear no matter which scary mods you download for Minecraft.
Hardcore Darkness is simple: it completely eliminates the minimum block light and sky light, making the shadows and darkness truly black. That’s it! Throw in a spooky monster mod, and it’ll heighten the sense of danger of being as blind as a bat without a torch. Honestly, it makes vanilla Minecraft feel all the more scary, too.
SCP Lockdown
If you love Minecraft, there’s a good chance you love the stories and creatures from the SCP Foundation, so why not marry the two? SCP Lockdown goes all out in its features, not just adding 76 new SCP-related mobs but randomly generated structures, new items, and even a new tiredness mechanic.
SCP Lockdown is exactly the kind of mod that benefits greatly from Hardcore Darkness, too. In fact, SCP Lockdown adds night vision goggles, which are even more useful with the increased darkness. On more than one occasion, I came face to face with the dark and switched on my night vision goggles, only to reveal an SCP hiding in the dark.
Sanity: Descent Into Madness
Are those creatures real, or is it just a trick of the light? Who knows! Sanity: Descent Into Madness makes you jump and yip at every sound and shadow, slowly but surely chipping away at your sanity until you’ve been reduced to a fetal position.
In addition to health and hunger, you have to keep your sanity in check, too. Sound familiar? It’s a mechanic taken straight from the popular survival game Don’t Starve. You best keep your sanity in check, though. Those figments of your imagination might be real after all.
Bloodmoon
Is nighttime really all that threatening? It doesn’t feel like it most of the time. Just go to bed, and you skip the monsters that spawn, right? The Bloodmoon mod aims to make nighttime a much more threatening reality. If the name didn’t tip you off, there’s a chance you’ll experience a blood moon, making monsters spawn closer and at a faster rate.
I love the claustrophobic feeling this mod provokes and the sudden anxiety when the sky turns that tinted red, especially when you’re miles away from home. You can’t sleep during a blood moon, either, so you can’t just make a temporary base to avoid it. My only suggestion is to increase the chances of a blood moon event from the default 5%. It’s way too small. I think 20 to 25 percent is the sweet spot or up to 50% for a more hardcore experience.
Dark Waters
The ocean is another aspect of Minecraft that could use a scary mod revamp, and Dark Waters was exactly what it needed. I recommend this mod even if you aren’t trying to make Minecraft into the scariest game ever. If you’re afraid of the ocean, this will only make it worse!
Dark Waters adds some truly horrifying, borderline-Lovecraftian creatures to the deep blue sea, like the four-armed myriad, the gigantic mortum star, and the bizarre psycho aberration. However, they only spawn when it rains, which happens pretty often, so you’ll definitely come in contact with these strange creatures if you decide to take a dip in the ocean.
