The most ghoulish of Amnesia's many ghoulish ideas is "vitae". It's a luminous, blue-green fluid that can be used as an energy source, a chemical catalyst and a supernatural healing agent. Each Amnesia game is broadly a story about the production of vitae, with some levels consisting of huge distillation and refining apparata, and major plot developments tied to what you do with it. In the original Amnesia: The Dark Descent, you'll brew potions using vitae in order to keep a decapitated head alive. In 2020's Amnesia: Rebirth, you'll use ornate metal cannisters of the stuff like batteries to power otherworldly machines. Vitae is the blood and breath of Amnesia, the grease upon the narrative axels, the fuel in its boiler, the miracle McGuffin that sustains its nastier flights of fantasy. But what is vitae, exactly? Agony.
]]>The Amnesia games are set decades apart, but they all begin in the same moment, a moment of waking that is also a moment of erasure and disconnection, a rebirth outside the flow of events from which to descend into the machine of history afresh. On 19th August 1839, a young man opens his eyes to find himself in a vast, silent castle in the forests of Prussia. He discovers a letter from his "past self", Daniel, who urges him to murder the castle's secluded owner, a baron named Alexander, and warns that he is being hunted by a monstrous Shadow. 60 years later on New Year's Eve, the celebrated meat factory owner Oswald Mandus starts awake in the opulent stillness of his manor house in London. Hearing the distant voices of his children, he goes to look for them in the "splendid architectures" below.
On 21st July 1916, at the height of World War I, the soldier Henri Clément stumbles from his sickbed in a colossal bunker beneath the Western Front. With nobody about, and no memory of events during his convalescence, he follows a trail of blood through the collapsing tunnels towards the pantry. And on an unknown day in March 1939, the engineering drafter Tasi Trianon wakes in the wreckage of a plane, deep in the Algerian desert, and enters the nearby caves in search of her husband Salim. Four games, four forgotten pasts, four new beginnings, one descent.
Beware: major spoilers for the entire Amnesia series below.
]]>The Amnesia series is returning in 2023 with another instalment in the long-running indie horror series, plonking us down in the already horrendous environments of World War I. With Amnesia: The Bunker, devs Frictional Games are also dialling down the scripted sequences in favour of a semi-open world survival sandbox. Steady your grip on your revolver and step into the dark to watch the trailer below.
]]>“What’s with all the meat everywhere, anyway?” my Death Trash alter ego Mildred asks. “It’s just there. Grows.” the meat merchant replies. “Maybe we’re living on a planet full of flesh and right now we’re standing on a crust of stone and dirt. So, do you want a piece of meat now?” I really don’t. But Mildred does. After all, this mystery meat is the main healing item in the game. It’s what keeps you and the world around you alive. It’s harvested from the ground like precious stones, the literal blood flowing in this grotesque world’s barebones economy, eaten raw and served in meat bars.
But where does the meat come from? Whence the amorphous flesh blobs and pools of blood? From another planet, another dimension? There are no animals in this strange ecosystem apart from Fleshworms. The strange meat seems to be linked to another mystery, the advent of the flesh titans (which are exactly what the name suggests). Soon we discover that we are able to commune with the meat and, through it, speak to a enigmatic being called The Oracle. The meat is a kind of universal consciousness, a flesh and blood information highway, into which those who are attuned to it can plug in. Whether the meat and the flesh titans are good or bad for humanity is up for debate, and there are factions that deify and others that hate them, vying for power. The clot thickens.
]]>Tis the season to be spooky, so you might fancy grabbing a free copy of Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs from Epic to keep you quivering until Amnesia: Rebirth launches next week. Piggy-wigs was quite different for an Amnesia follow-up, having been made by Everybody's Gone To The Rapture developers Thechineseroom rather than series creators Frictional Games, but it does have some jolly unpleasant parts. Defs worth a poke for the price.
]]>In the run-up to the release of Amnesia: Rebirth, Frictional Games are continuing to show love to their first Amnesia game for its tenth anniversary. Paying tribute to the modding community that's played no small part in Amnesia's longevity, Frictional have now released the source code for Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs freely online.
]]>After a stretch of teasing and ARG puzzling, Soma developers Frictional Games today announced their next game, Amnesia: Rebirth. This autumn they'll return to the first-person horror series that made their name with a new protagonist, a new setting, and new awfulness. Have a peek in the announcement trailer below.
]]>If you have not bought the Amnesia first-person spookers intentionally, inadvertently acquired them in an old bundle you don't really remember buying, nor grabbed them when they were free in January good news: both Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs are free for keepsies right now on Steam. What's changed since the last giveaway? I still have not finished either of them, I'll tell you that much. You go lock yourselves into dungeons with terrible monsters, I'll be just fine where I am, thanks.
]]>Hey, come here a second. I want you to stare at this dank room full of eerie machinery. Really give it a good stare. Drink in the atmosphere, maybe play with some of the meatblobs, think about how small we are in the universe, and
BOO!
Liked that, did you? If you quite like a spot of spooking with cosmic horror and science gone meatwild, you might enjoy more free scares in Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine for pigs. The pair of first-person puzzle-o-horrors are free for keepsies right now, see, Steam keys and all.
]]>The Chinese Room, the studio behind Everybody's Gone to the Rapture and Dear Esther as well as Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, have laid off their development team and are "going dark" for a bit while they figure out "what happens next". Financial and personal pressures were too much, see, so they're taking a break. When they come back, they say, it won't be to make walking sims. I don't know why they mention walk 'em ups after Pip and I settled once and for all that Dear Esther and Rapture are not walking simulators, but there you go.
]]>The next game from the creators of Everybody's Gone to the Rapture, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs and Dear Esther will be a systems-driven isometric adventure, inspired by tabletop RPGs and wargames. I spoke to The Chinese Room's studio director Dan Pinchbeck about the game, Total Dark, and he explained that he's wanted to make a game driven by RPG-style mechanics for a long time.
As well as providing us with some of the first details about Total Dark, he discussed the continuing influence of Esther, and the ways in which 'walking simulators' are returning to their first-person adventure roots.
]]>Everybody's Gone to the Rapture [official site], the latest from Dear Esther and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs developers The Chinese Room, is finally heading to PC. I spoke to studio head Dan Pinchbeck earlier this week and he told me that the completed PC port has now been delivered to Sony, who will be acting as publishers. Sony's role means they'll be responsible for selecting a release date and marketing the game, as they did with Helldivers when it came to PC late last year.
But it's coming. The rapture is coming.
]]>Something I can't do – have never been able to do – in terms of what I do for a living is enjoy horror games.
That's why I've decided to talk the matter over with Adam, one of the RPS resident horror fans and the chap whose own most recent supporter post dealt with Five Nights At Freddy's; a nasty, brutish horror game but one not without merit or skill.
]]>It was not so long ago that our own Adam "Murder Maestro" Smith lamented the lack of imagination in horror stories. Implausibly trap-laden asylums, spoooooky forests, and hastily cobbled-together castles dominate, while more interesting locales and subject matters are few and far-between. While I wouldn't go so far as to say that horror's stuck in a full-blown rut, it could certainly end up there if it keeps wandering down the same predictable trail. I've been thinking about it, though (largely while replaying Amnesia: The Dark Descent as Halloween nightmare fuel), and I've come to realize that there are some amazing avenues ahead for stomach-lurching scares in gaming. Problem is, there are a few major, perhaps even primeval forces that could slip a dangling noose around possibility's all-too-exposed neck.
]]>As you didn't notice, I've been away for the last three months, to focus on helping raise the child which will one day destroy the universe. In between prising the crushed, partially-chewed remains of smaller star systems from her tiny, iron grip, I managed to play a few videogames. Some for a while, but most only for a couple of hours. Despite myself, it was difficult not to have opinions about them, and to want to write those opinions on some manner of 'web' 'site.' I bided my time. I waited. And now here I am, able to force you to listen to my single-sentence opinions on 13 recent videogames - the likes of Saints Row IV, Gone Home, The Bureau, Papers Please and even that car-stealing thing on console. For the first time on RPS, I have even included a rating for each game.
]]>Looking through the recent releases on Steam, a casual observer might believe that there’s a horror game renaissance underway. In the last few weeks, several games have appeared, with titles like Paranormal and The Orphanage. I’ve installed a few of them, heard them go bump in the night, and then moved on. Despite some quality releases, horror is in a rut. And it’s an unpleasant one.
]]>I’ve spent most of the week thinking about Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs. I finished the story at the weekend and spent the last five minutes of the game with a huge grin plastered across my face. Not the reaction that a horror game might hope to elicit but thechineseroom’s cleverly concealed secret, hidden behind the dark curtain of that title, is that in some ways they haven’t really constructed a horror game at all. Thankfully, they’ve made something far more interesting instead.
]]>Fear is the event of the season. We shouldn't be surprised. As Ol' Grandfather Gillen pointed out so long ago, it's something that games are good at. It might be the thing that they are best at. Amnesia: The Dark Descent was one of the highlights in that regard: a world where vulnerability and atmospherics smothered you like the pillow in the hands of a maniac. Its sequel, A Machine For Pigs, wants to pull off the same tricks. Only more. Only worse.
The horror? The horror? Here's wot I feel.
]]>How long have we been waiting for Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs now? Has it been years? Decades? Centuries? Eons? I forget. Perhaps it's because I HAVE AMNESIA. No, no, that's not actually true. I just don't feel like looking it up. But today is a good day, because there's finally a dim, ominously flickering light at the end of the tunnel. Though the machine might be intended for pigs, we'll be able to wrap our non-cloven hands around it early next month.
]]>I do not have amnesia, but I just nearly rewrote the intro from my last post about an Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs delay, so that's kind of eerie. Also, indicative! Thechineseroom's slow-roasting, pork-flavored reinvention of Frictional's modern classic has missed the mark a few times now, and it's all starting to kind of run together. Granted, the last slippage yielded a larger, much more Amnesia-esque experience, so delays definitely aren't silently slurping this one's bones in the dark. At this point, it's all about polish, and the dynamic developer duo would much rather be great than fast.
]]>After spending many eerily silent ages in the dark, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs is finally just about ready to see the light of day. Games, however, don't usually stew in the boiling juices of development because it feels nice. (That's why I do it, but shush, don't tell anyone.) Thechineseroom's take on Frictional tour de force of terror, then, has fleshvomited all manner of new appendages, morphing itself into an entirely different beast than originally conceived. But what, exactly, does that entail? During a recent interview with RPS, thechineseroom creative director Dan Pinchbeck outlined what's happened and explained why A Machine For Pigs ultimately ended up a far more natural successor to Amnesia: The Dark Descent than anyone - himself included - expected.
]]>Machines are hard to build. So many nuts and bolts and gears and rubber bands and ceaseless triathlete hamsters to arrange. But machines for pigs? They make regular ol' mazes of mechanical madness look easy. I say this, of course, not from a place of personal experience, but from watching Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs slip 'n' slide from Halloween last year all the way into the indiscriminate reaches of 2013. But now, finally, it's gracefully pirouetting into place, and Frictional's seen fit to both paint a target and explain exactly what took so long in the first place.
]]>It's been too long since we saw some moving pictures of the Amnesia sequel, A Machine For Pigs, this time developed by the Dear Esther team, thechineseroom. But we need wait no longer, as the fast approach of All Saints Day means spooky footage is of the highest order, and you can see the new trailer below. It's a bit scary.
]]>It's easy to forget Amnesia. And I don't mean that in the sense that it's a forgettable experience (it's most certainly not) or that amnesia, the unfortunate mental condition, might lead to forgetfulness (duh). Rather, Dark Descent's been out for two years, and it's become pretty far removed from the public eye. Sure, it'll occasionally pop up on the cover of some trashy tabloid rag (Did you know that it's become both fat and Bigfoot?), but thechineseroom-developed A Machine For Pigs is now the series' main attention hog. Over on Frictional's blog, though, there's an "Amnesia - Two Years Later" post that provides some super interesting info about the oppressively scary hit's present and a brief taste of what Frictional's up to now.
]]>It's Halloween night, and you're safe and sound in your own home. Even so, you feel a creeping sense of dread slowly start to take hold, but you can't put your finger on what exactly is causing it. You glance over your shoulder. A werewolf. You glance over your other shoulder. A giant spider with masses of smaller spiders for eyes. You look in a mirror. Turns out, you're dissolving into a writhing pile of centipedes. Then, the horror begins: "Sorry, guys," you say. "Amnesia got delayed into 2013. We can't play it tonight like we'd planned." So your party's really boring and anticlimactic - just like the end of this little story.
]]>The first footage for Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs all but confirms that the machine in question is not a belly-tickling porcine laughter factory, so there's my hopes of a My Little Piglet friendship simulator dashed to bits against a dank wall. From Dear Esther developers The Chinese Room and Frictional, the game looks much more like The Dark Descent than I'd expected, wavering vision, cowering and hideous unseen hunters all being present and horribly incorrect. There are also outdoor areas though, which immediately gives me hope for greater variety in locations and maybe even a stronger adventure element. Could be very special.
]]>Fresh after winning the IGF award for most graphics for Dear Esther, thechineseroom Creative Director Dan Pinchbeck and I sat down for a natter about their upcoming continuation of Frictional Games' Amnesia series, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs. It went a little something like this:
]]>As it was rumoured, so it shall be. Dear Esther's lead writer, Dan Pinchbeck, has revealed to Joystiq that thechineseroom are working on A Machine For Pigs, set in Amnesia's world, although it won't be a direct sequel to the dimly lit descent. It will, however, star a wealthy industrialist called Daniel Plainview Oswald Mandus, who returns from an ill-fated trip to Mexico in 1899 and finds that his body is plagued with fever and his mind is plagued with nightmares that revolve around an ominous machine. Possibly for pigs. Probably not some sort of mechanical pig disco and daycare centre.
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