The Lurker

👁️ THE LURKER 👁️

A psychological-horror NextBot that watches, listens, remembers... and waits.

Most NextBots just run at you. The Lurker doesn't. For most of a session you will barely see him. He is there, he is paying attention, and the map slowly stops feeling safe.

🩸 HOW HE BEHAVES

• Passive by default. While calm he stays hidden. You only see him in short sightings, standing still and silent in a far-off window or doorway, gone the moment you really look at him.
• Provoke him and he escalates. A few hits and he vanishes and watches. More hits and he lashes out at the environment: props, lights, doors. At around 20 hits he hunts for about 30 seconds, then disappears. Keep fighting and he moves on to Massacre, Final and Last.
• Noise and chaos matter. Sustained gunfire and explosions make him angrier even when you never touch him. NPC hits count the same as player hits.
• He can't be killed. Damage is blocked. If something still manages it, he fakes his death and comes back.
• He notices everyone. Even while stalking one player he reacts to the others: anyone who gets close, anyone who looks at him, and scares of their own.

🚪 ENCOUNTERS

• Window and doorway sightings, and reflections that show him behind you in mirrors and glass.
• Quiet changes: props turned toward where you stand, doors opened or closed while nobody is looking. Frozen and constrained props are never touched.
• Knocking from the other side of doors and walls near you.
• Hallway scare: rare, in the dark, when you're looking down a long straight line. He appears at the far end and rushes you.
• Aftermath: after a kill he drags the body somewhere hidden, feeds on it, then either possesses the ragdoll (it only moves while nobody is watching) or leaves it as bait.
• Don't Look events, the giant hand, ceiling drops, nightmares, whispers, fake footsteps, mimicked sounds, hallucinations and flickering lights.
• He remembers where each player spends their time, and uses it.

🧠 PARANOIA, DIRECTOR AND AUDIO

• Fear builds in the dark in sudden jumps, with heartbeat, distorted vision and audio pressure. Light and flashlights calm you down.
• A scare director paces everything: quiet periods after scares, build-up before big ones, no back-to-back repeats, and grace time for players who just spawned.
• A layered audio mix: a presence layer that follows him and changes with his mood, and screams that cut through the music.

🔥 PLAYER COUNTERPLAY

• Flare: pushes him away. Default key G (change it in Q Menu → Options → The Lurker) or type !flare. It has a cooldown and doesn't interfere with the flashlight.
• Emergency Generator: spawn it from Entities → Objects (or ent_create sent_lurker_generator) and press E. It creates a temporary protected area that forces nearby Lurkers to back off.
• Offerings: hold E on a ragdoll or body gib to distract him for a while.
• Use light, break line of sight, keep moving, and stay quiet.

⚙️ ADMIN SETTINGS

Everything can be toggled under Q Menu → Options → The Lurker: screen effects, heartbeat, hallucinations, light flicker, prop throwing, door locking, mimic sounds, jumpscares, Don't Look, hand events, whispers, fake footsteps, ceiling drops, nightmares, window sightings, reflections, rearranged props, invisible stalking, hallway scare, corpse scenes, knocking, the scare director, the audio mix, safe zones, flares and more. Settings sync to all players and are saved between sessions.

Server owners: The Lurker writes the reasons for his decisions to garrysmod/data/lurker_log.txt. Please attach the last lines when you report a bug.

🗺️ MAPS

A generated navmesh is strongly recommended. There is a limited fallback for maps without one, but movement and sightings are less reliable.

⚠️ CONTENT WARNING

Jumpscares, loud sounds, flashing lights, screen effects and psychological horror. Use headphones at a comfortable volume.

📜 CREDITS

Created by Fuzzy. Built on the Garry's Mod NextBot framework. If you enjoy it, please rate it, and report bugs with the map name, player count and console errors.