In the best kids movies, they have an element of scary and creepy to really make it feel more real and thrilling for kids.
Examples are (from my youth), the fireplace scene in Home alone 1. Or the kids literally dying to jolly oompa loompa songs in Charlie Chocolate Factory. Pirates of the carribean pirate lore. The list goes on.
Add elements to the lore and game that are deep and dark and mysterious. Below are some ideas off the top of my head that would work towards this ideal for the game.
Have scary sounds that play at certain locations, like cave noises. Or specific areas where death happened, where there is eerie wind that doesn't fully sound like the normal wind, it has a subtle hint of screaming from the souls of the trapped in between life and death.
If there is a dark cave, make an even darker cave. Where the blacks go all the way and you can not see. Put a pair of shimmering eyes in there.
Some times those eyes look at you from the distance ahen you are afk and alone on your boat. And they go away when you move.
Grim reaper, lurking in the shadows.
Extremely rarely, if you look at an island far away with a scope, you see movement. And it is almost humanoid. But its not a player.
Some times, when in a certain area where a skeleton is from a person who died, at night time, if a group of friends plays music together, a faint sound of an even more broken, off tune instrument nobody is playing adds to the music. A faint outline of the ghost can be spotted in the darkness. If lit up by lantern, it disappears.
Statues that move ever so slightly while you look away. But dismiss you as something it doesn't care about and remains still.
Dark forest island.
Owl hoots at night. Some times sounds a bit like a tribe call (done with hands) if you are at a unique place.
I feel if Rare hired me I could totally come up with a huge amount of this and other world filling yet unintrusive (or additive) to gameplay stuff.
Anybody else got ideas that would make the game creepier?
