of his off-hours working on the level, and Smith stated that Thomas was responsible for "all of the implementation" of the level's theories. The team worked to discover the causes and mechanics of fear, and they analyzed horror films for inspiration. "Robbing the Cradle" includes influences from the Silent Hill and System Shock series, from the films The Devil's Backbone, Jacob's Ladder and Session 9, and from the books House of Leaves, From Hell and The Shining. Thomas applied psychological horror techniques that he hoped would stay with the player even after the level's end. To generate fear, he used a combination of scripted sequences and unplanned, emergent factors. Every light source in the level dims and brightens at an imperceptibly slow speed, which Thomas hoped would create a "subconscious sense of breathing" and thereby make the Shalebridge Cradle feel like a living entity. Lights were programmed to flicker when approached by Puppets; however, Puppets roam the level in real-time, and so Thomas was unable to predict which lights would flicker at which times. He believed that this gave the player the feeling of being hunted. Thomas explained that the Shalebridge Cradle's design was based on "dozens of actual, existing Victorian hospitals and reputedly haunted buildings". The Danvers State Hospital was a key influence, and Smith went with other members of the team to visit an abandoned asylum in Austin, Texas. Thomas gathered photographs by urban explorers and studied past methods of treating mental disorders, and he "read reams of patient and staff interviews". Audio director Eric Brosius composed the Cradle's soundscape, which Gillen later described as "a drunken miasma of sound [... that makes] you uneasy until an unexpected noise splits asunder". Reception and legacy "Robbing the Cradle" was widely praised. It was the subject of a ten-page feature by Kieron Gillen in PC Gamer UK, the first and only article dedicated to a single level in that magazine. Gillen hailed it as "one of the most brilliant and disturbing levels ever committed to PC", and he believed that it was "probably the scariest level ever made". Tom McNamara of IGN wrote that the level "just has to be experienced to be believed", and he praised its sound design. He considered the level to be a high point of Deadly Shadows. GameSpot's Greg Kasavin called the level "remarkable" and "nerve-wracking", and IGN's Shunal Doke noted in a retrospective feature