While the horror genre has been around for a long time it has mainly been focusing on characters with some sort of human resemblance. Specifically robots have had a very limited appearances in this genre. This paper investigates which of two models; a human and a robot, will inflict the most intimidation according to participants' own evaluations as well as biomarkers. The study presents a research platform which enables a site specific horror-like escape room experience in augmented reality developed for the HoloLens 2. The experience takes baseline in the horror game Root of Guilt of which some assets are reused.
The experience is designed to be immersive and interactive in an unsettling environment in which the participants are exposed to the two characters. The results presented show that further data processing is necessary in order to gather viable results from the psychological measures. However according to participants' the human was deemed as the more intimidating of the two. Furthermore the escape room is evaluate as an intimidating yet enjoyable experience and the participants shows interest in more content.