The hidden maze puzzle in 7th Guest is pretty "tight" feeling and might give someone with claustrophobia issues, especially since you get lost pretty easily. I used to get this feeling in Fallout1 also when I would get "stuck" in a room because someone would be blocking the doorway, before I learned to PUSH them out of the way. Some racing games with tunnels, a lot of FPS that take you down dark hallways or make you feel "stuck" inside a location until you can proceed further (oh thank you I found the lever now I can GET OUT.) Horror games probably do this frequently though nothing comes to mind. SS2 might make someone feel claustrophobic, and other "stuck in this place" games with tension factors. Heck, even the Alien Shooter games give a good feeling of "ahhH!!!! get me out of here!" that might trigger someone with claustrophobia.

Yup - theres quite a lot.
Course, it depends on what triggers your claustrophobia - while it may be the fear of confined spaces, a sewer pipe / tunnel may not trigger you, yet scenes in the (wide) tunnels of metro2033 may do so due to the NPCs proximity and the overall atmosphere.
Ultimately it often boils down to a sense of feeling trapped - so for me crowded places are often a trigger (actually, on that, the "station" scenes in metro 2033 were damned claustrophobic).

So yeah, it can be used as a metaphor in regards to content / game world restrictions, but also as a direcly descriptive term.

It is a PS2 game isn't it ? Yeah, camera view in the game is the eye of the gamer. I can see how bad camera view could give the feeling of "no ! I cannot view my surrounding. I feel trapped here"

interesting examples. So.. I guess game like Legend of Grimrock (the first one) also would give real feeling of claustrophobic right ? stuck in underground surrounded by the walls. Many narrow paths and etc.

Hmm. I see. Thank you for the examples from your personal experience. So in term of game mechanic it could mean one thing (lack of exploration feature), and in term of player experience, it could mean another thing (real claustrophobic experience).

I guess immersion in games could really trigger some real life phobia (height, narrow place,etc). I might use this matter for some research topic -well, doesn't hurt to some reserve for research topic.

Thank you for the information guys :D

Just check the Skyirm mods to patch out the spiders for arachnophobes - prime example there.

Red Ninja is on PS2 and Xbox.

Overall camera controls were bad all around (like whiplash), which is the main reason i never got very far, nor had the patience to try to get far.

Honestly it probably wouldn't take much for tweaking to fix those problems. I have no idea how good or bad the game actually is :(

But then the correct term should be "too linear"? (oh well, seem I'm not anymore in the "onda")
But basically we are using now psychological disorder terms for speaking about game design? ... ah, the mankind!

Just by curiosity, do you has links to any paper. or paper notice about this ? I mean yes, I understand by your comment that at least Metro 2033 give you bad time playing it, but I have a honest interest on reading more about this "virtual" triggers.

I like claustrophobic spaces in games. A lot of my favourite games are full of environments like that, from Thief 1 to Ultima Underworld to Portal 1.

Tighter spaces tend to force the game developer to create good level design, or at least to try.

That's usually how I've seen it used as well.

I think it means the game involves riding around in elevators, or crawling around in boxes.

To me a game feels claustrophobic if it has a tight FOV (like 60°) instead of a decent FOV (like 90° - 110° or so).

For me, it's not the narrowness of the environment (small caves, vent holes, small rooms, etc) nor the 'mood'. Mainly it's the FOV.