why is "Minecraft" so scary sometimes

I think there are a few reasons--one more related to human nature, the other being a more recent phenomenon. A key component of Minecraft, one of the most popular games of all time, is of course mining (it's in the name). But human beings, by nature, are scared of the dark. And if you're not scared of the dark, then you're lying, or you're not human (or you're like, a 2000's era emo kid and you think it's cool to actually love the dark--you're actually not scared at all. Either way, I still don't believe you).

https://www.minecraft.net/en-us/article/-caves---cliffs-part-ii--prep-guide, new cave generation from the caves and cliffs update.

I stumbled across this reddit post, about seven months old, about someone who cannot beat Minecraft because they are too scared of the caves, and too scared of the hostile mobs. And a lot of the comments were actually pretty supportive and helpful, rather than dunking on this person who is scared of Minecraft, the game for kids (which, being Reddit, I was honestly pretty shocked). The thing is, I know exactly how this person probably feels--the threat of these hostile mobs in a giant, dark cave is always constant. Which means the threat of losing everything you have is always constant, too. You have an idea of what is lurking in a Minecraft cave, but you never know for sure until you're deep in the cave yourself. And I'm sure that anyone who has played Minecraft before has been jump-scared by a random creeper sneaking up behind you.

The fear of the dark is something a wealth of different media pulls on to force their audience into uncomfortable positions because it is so ingrained in us--we are supposed to be afraid of the dark.

But I don't think there's only a fear of darkness at play here. It may have started that way for sure, but with how long Minecraft has been around, there's a certain level of nostalgia it carries now, too. I think that nostalgia could be factoring in to some degree, in the sense of time and urban legends. Think of things like the back rooms, which got so insanely popular that it spawned approximately four billion video games, web series', art, you name it. But the back rooms only worked because it existed in a weird space between "I've seen this place before" and "this place could never possibly exist." It's kind of uncanny.

I recently came across an older Minecraft video that was on one of the first version of Minecraft ever (I'm talking old like no hunger bar--it was old). And it made me really uncomfortable, and for the life of me I couldn't tell you why, but I was looking at the over-saturated colors and listening to the compressed sound effects and I couldn't help but feel a little uneasy. I remember hearing stories about Herobrine when I was a kid, which always scared me, and while I don't think stories like that had an influence on how I felt, I think urban legends/ARG's like that are worth mentioning in this case. There are web series' now that deal with old Minecraft, and put their own little haunted spin on it (the classic finding an old version of Minecraft, only for it to be inhabited by some haunted, evil entity). If anything, the nostalgic nature of Minecraft predisposes it to reinterpretations in the horror genre. The idea of something once beloved becoming corrupted beyond recognition (or perhaps, just within your recognition) is the back rooms appeal. Minecraft represents a large piece of a lot of people's childhood, making it prime real estate to scare you.

I'm not sure why this happens, specifically with older games, or even older looking games. Nostalgic appearances create the canvas for horror--even now, newer horror games are reverting to old graphics to reinforce the genre. So while Minecraft definitely pulls on the fear of the dark (maybe unintentionally, maybe not), I think it's also due to an emerging trend in nostalgia-based horror lurking quietly in the background.