A modpack (made) with blood, sweat and tears

[self-review!]

I've been developing TREPIDATION since 2021, and what a ride it's been! I'm really proud of my work so far but also think this pack has a long way to go. Honestly, I had no idea trepidation would be this fun when I first started working on it. Hell, I had no idea minecraft could be this fun, especially the combat! Yes yes yes, of course I'm biased, but if I wasn't having fun in my own pack, I wouldn't give a damn about developing it anymore. Everything from the combat and movement just feels so fluid and satisfying. If you've played doom eternal, you'll know what I'm talking about. I want to continue to build on that.

A massive focus on the pack has also been horror. A lot of people have gave feedback and debated if a pack or game can really combine speedrunning and horror, I'm still of the camp that yes, it can. Let me talk about my reasoning.

I don't believe that just because this is categorized as a "horror modpack" means that the entire playthrough of the pack must be always invoke the feeling of horror. Good horror has a mix and explores other avenues. While I understand the main point is that much of the horror is mitigated by the ability to just i-frame and dash away, I don't actually think that detracts from the overall scary experience.
Look up the meaning of trepidation: "tremulous fear, alarm, or agitation; perturbation." That is exactly the kind of feeling I want to invoke in the pack. It's the feeling of going up to fight a Blazing Juggernaut but then quickly realizing they are avoiding all your attacks and do massive damage. It's the feeling of walking around the Erebus in the darkness and hearing a crawly noise get louder and louder. Yes, you dash away from these situations, but what makes it so much scarier is that you have control. Outlast and Resident Evil isn't scary only because of the gruesome scenes or the setting, it's scary because of the chase scenes and it's easy to get lost or mess up mechanically. It's all in your control and your fear can easily put you in a bad situation. In TREPIDATION, giving the player so many options to escape makes your brain fire off many thoughts as once, making you panic and be more prone to mistakes as you decide where to dash away to or if you should hide in a hole or what ability to use. The amount of times I've ended up in worse situations because of my panic...

I feel like that's the key word, panic. That's the feeling I like to provoke in every dimension. Just pushing "w" to run away in a game like Minecraft doesn't really put you in a panic state as much doing parkour moves while dodging and keeping track of 18 things all at once does. Dashing away quickly puts you in situations you'd rather not be in sometimes because of your panic state, and so you have to dash away more until eventually you've panicked so much that you're out of dashes. That's when the horror sets in, the feeling that all this power you had is suddenly gone, and you feel helpless and desperate. It's only going to get better as more mobs get custom abilities and as the dimensions get more content and become polished. The feeling of terror (as in suspense and dread) is there, but not nearly as much as I'd like it to be, so I have ideas for that as well.

But anyway, I just wanted to talk about that. Go play TREPIDATION and shit your pants like I have so many times during development and testing 😭