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.
]]>Welcome to The RPS Time Capsule, a new monthly feature we're putting together where every member of the RPS editorial team picks their favourite, bestest best game from a specific year and tells us why that game above all else deserves to be preserved in our freshly minted time pod. It might be that it's the best example of its genre, or it contains a valuable lesson for future generations. This month, we're travelling back to rescue eight games from 2010, and cor, what a good year that was. Too bad almost all of them will end up in the lava bin by the time we're done.
]]>The year is 1937, and you've just woken up in a crashed plane in the middle of a desert. You're not some sort of Indiana Jones-esque film though, I'm afraid, you're in a horror game - Amnesia: Rebirth, to be exact. It's the new survival horror from Frictional Games, the team behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Soma, and it's out today.
How can the horror of a traditionally dark and dingy series hold up under the bright desert sun? I talked with game director Thomas Grip and creative lead Fredrik Olsson to find out. We also discussed monsters and things they've learned from their old games, as well as how player choice can make horror that much more horrifying.
]]>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.
]]>In all of horror, the true terror often lies in threats of things that might have been more than what really is. A jump scare that's just a gust of wind or a monster that's actually a hallucination, you know the kind. Here's a truly frightening prospect then: a version of Amnesia: The Dark Descent with some very different details. Frictional Games celebrated the game's 10th anniversary by sharing some lesser-known ideas for the game as it might have been. Some of them are a real trip.
]]>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've not heard, those folks who done underwater horror game Soma and haunted house horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent are working on another thing that is almost certainly a horror game. And look, it's a scary desert game this time around. Probably. We don't know for sure yet because so far they've led players on an ARG—that's alternate reality game—looking for clues about what their next proper video game might be. Today them super sleuths have uncovered another hidden video and this one looks like an actual game (teaser) trailer.
]]>The folks over at Frictional Games seem to have something new in the works. The studio has largely been quiet since releasing SOMA back in 2015 aside from adding a monster-free Safe Mode to the spooky underwater game. Frictional overhauled their old website just before taking a holiday break and in the update have added a new entry to the "games" tab simply called "Next Frictional Game."
]]>I return to Amnesia: The Dark Descent with one question alone: will it still scare me?
Amnesia scared the bejesus out of me in 2010 when it first came out. But we all know how games age, and the magic can wear off. At the time the graphics and physics on offer were really astonishing work for a tiny indie team, but what about almost a decade later? Can it still make me do that bum-clenched mad panic thing where I lean in forward in my chair in an effort to get away from the monsters faster? Or will it seem a little quaint now?
]]>Nobody has to die, Justine told me. There's a way to save them all.
Reader, I did not save them all.
]]>With the season of spooky celebrations kicking off, Amnesia: The Dark Descent has added a Hard Mode for people who wish to suffer terrible cruelty as they explore the horrible ghost house of meat monsters. The new mode, added to 2010's first-person spooker in a patch today, makes the meatmen more murderous and starves us of comforting light so we lose our mind (and then die as we lose our loose grip on reality). So a real good time. It's a stark contrast to the bonus mode developers Frictional Games added to their later Soma - an easy option for explorers and sightseers. This time, they want you dead.
]]>I was jolly pleased when Frictional Games patched a 'Safe Mode' into Soma, letting fraidypants like me freely explore the undersea horror. Conversely, I said "Ha ha ha NOPE" aloud after Frictional announced today that they will next add a new difficulty level to Amnesia: The Dark Descent - a 'Hard Mode' to freak your nut out and murder you hard. No thank you! But I know some Amnesia players had wanted their minds more fragile and its ghoulies deadlier, so good for them? Agh.
]]>The inspiration for Alien: Isolation came from a simple thought experiment: what if somebody let a lion loose in developer Creative Assembly’s office? “I’d get behind my desk and make sure it wouldn’t see me,” says the game’s creative director Alistair Hope. “Then, you’d need to get to the fire escape. Maybe I’d move desk to desk and distract it. If you are confronted by it, what do you do? What do you know about it? What do you know about what it knows about you? That felt pretty cool, and it wasn’t relying on scripted events.”
Most of us know the feelings of dread that accompany playing a horror game. But how do developers create those feelings from scratch? What are the tricks that developers use to scare us, and create a sense of atmosphere? How do they go from imagining a lion in a studio, or an empty bathroom, to moments that will scare the pants off us? I spoke to four of the top minds in the industry to find out.
]]>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.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives and PC miscellany. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.
I have a limited patience for scary games. I enjoy a surprise jump-scare here and there, but I struggle to enjoy an incessant barrage of them making every step an anxiety-inducing moment. And yet, wow, I love Amnesia.
]]>Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.
Before they struck (presumably cursed) gold with Amnesia: The Dark Descent , Frictional Games released a trilogy of shorter first-person horror games under the title Penumbra [official site]. The first of these, Overture, was a bit wonky, and the third, Requiem, completely lost the plot. But the middle entry, Black Plague, is as good as anything the Swedish horror maestros have released since.
]]>These are my personal Edwin Droods. Stories that I've failed to finish, for one reason or another, and that are left suspended. In the manner of somebody reversing out of a relationship like a heavy goods vehicle, trundling slowly and beeping nonchalantly, I'd like to say to the games included: “It's not you, it's me.”
]]>While Frictional are exploring the depths of consciousness in their latest creep-fest Soma, other developers are continuing the story they began in Penumbra [official site] all those years ago. A team going by the name CounterCurrent Games released an unofficial total conversion going by the name Necrologue last Halloween and this year they finished the story with the fantastically-named Twilight of the Archaic [official site]. Just look at that title for a few seconds. It's magnificent. The games are built on Amnesia: The Dark Descent so you'll need that to play, and can then download both Necrologue and Teatime of the Archaic from ModDB or through Steam.
]]>Five years ago, Frictional released Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a horror game that made us afraid of the water. That was five years ago. Now, with SOMA [official site], the studio have switched from gothic castles to science fiction and they're taking us right to the bottom of the ocean. I've faced my fears and here's wot I think.
]]>Next week, Frictional's Soma [official site] will finally be available. Amnesia: The Dark Descent is five years old and surely everyone is ready for another round of the first-person frighteners? I've already played a fairly large chunk of the game and will have a review ready for you before launch, so you can trust me when I say that the "story trailer" below has been carefully edited so as not to spoil any major parts of the story. There's an awful lot going on.
]]>That's the cheese of Yuri with his mind-controlled squid and the whine of you whimpering as horrible things stalk you through the dark, to be clear.
Point is: you can now download and keep forever Westwood Studios' olde RTS Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 and Frictional Games not-so-oldish first-person spooker Amnesia: The Dark Descent and not in that way, you little urchin. RA2 (plus its expansion) is the latest freebie on Origin to promote EA's service, while Frictional dropping this freebie shortly before the launch of their new horrorshow Soma.
]]>I'd presumed Frictional's upcoming SOMA was basically just sci-fi Amnesia: the night is dark and full of terrors, and all that. Turns out there's at least one major change to formula: you get to talk to people. And you know things about those people that they don't know themselves. And it's horrifying.
]]>We're seven years old! (Actually, we were seven years old last month, but we've never been much for punctuality.) And so by way of celebration we've curated the latest weekly Humble Bundle, and that means we've chosen some of our most beloved indie games from the past seven years for the Pay What You Want sale. An esoteric bunch, but so very beautiful, all. If only there were room for all the delights of those many wonderful years. As ever, some of the money goes to charity, too: we chose EFF and Medecins Sans Frontieres. Find out more, below, or simply click over the the bundle itself.
]]>Somewhere in the dark and nasty regions, where nobody goes, stands an ancient castle, according to an old British legend. Deep within this dank and uninviting place, lives Jonathan Burke, overworked servant of "the thing upstairs." But that's nothing compared to the horrors that lurk beneath the trap door, for there is always something down there, in the dark, waiting to come out.
Don't you download that Trapdoor. You're a fool if you dare. Stay away from that trapdoor, 'cause there's something down there...
]]>I played Amnesia: The Dark Descent spiritual/ghooooostual successor SOMA, and it didn't really do it for me. That said, Frictional creative director Thomas Grip's plans for the wetter-is-deader stroll into the maw of madness are quite interesting, though whether he can pull it all off remains to be seen. Today we continue on from our previous discussion, pushing doggedly forward into Grip's plan for possibly the longest build-up (five hours!) in horror gaming history, YouTube culture's effect on horror, procedurally generated scares and why they both aid and mortally wound true terror, modern horror's over-reliance on samey settings and tropes, and where Grip sees the genre heading in the future.
Agree or disagree, the man has some extremely illuminating perspectives, and you can't fault him for wanting to break away from the played-out influence of his own previous game. It's all below.
]]>SOMA didn't scare the scuba suit off me, but I did find a creeping sort of potential in its soaked-to-the-bone corridors. Amnesia: The Dark Descent 2 this ain't. Or at least, it's not aiming to be. Currently, it still feels a lot like a slower-paced, less-monster-packed Amnesia in a different (though still very traditionally survival-horror-y) setting, but Frictional creative director Thomas Grip has big plans. I spoke with him about how he hopes to evolve the game, inevitable comparisons to the Big Daddy of gaming's small undersea pond, BioShock, why simple monster AI is better than more sophisticated options, the mundanity of death, and how SOMA's been pretty profoundly influenced by indie mega-hits like Dear Esther and Gone Home.
]]>It's not that I feel like SOMA is poorly made. On the contrary: for a demo of a game that's at least a year out, the Amnesia spiritual successor practically sparkles beneath its grimy, moss-encrusted shell. I just feel like, despite a very unexpected setting, I've been here before. Crept through these halls, turned these nobs, let these tidal waves of otherworldly sound crash into me as I press ever onward, slightly on-edge but no worse for the wear.
]]>Everyone knows that the scariest things aren't actually monsters themselves. It's the horrors lurking in our own runaway imaginations, creatures of such impossible (and impossibly specific) phobia that our only recourse is to head for the hills long before we ever see them. That's the power of a great horror environment. SOMA's Upsilon research facility, for instance, creaks, groans, and whines quietly to itself like a child who's afraid of the dark. From there, your mind does the heavy lifting. Watch below, and then read about Amnesia: The Dark Descent developer Frictional's core design pillars for its sci-fi madhouse.
]]>Level With Me is a series of interviews with game developers about their games, work process, and design philosophy. At the end of each interview, they design part of a small first person game. You can play this game at the very end of the series.
Thomas Grip is creative director of Frictional Games, based in Helsingborg, Sweden. They're known mostly for the Penumbra (a first person horror game series) and Amnesia (another first person horror game series), and they're currently working on another first person horror game called SOMA (a first person horror game). Astute readers may sense a pattern.
]]>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.
]]>Everything starts somewhere. Even the greatest of successes have humble beginnings, and Gone Home's previously known origins were already pretty darn grassroots. That makes this revelation about its start as an Amnesia: The Dark Descent mod double-humble, as far as I'm concerned. What I'm saying is, Gone Home could be in a Humble Bundle all by itself. It is that humble. But anyway. Frictional and Fullbright have unearthed the very, very early Gone Home Amnesia prototype, and you can play it right now. Details after the break.
]]>We still don't know much about SOMA, Amnesia developers Frictional's next game. But there is a general theme emerging from the teaser videos: the first video showed an engineer attempting to communicate with what appeared to be a H.R. Giger's CRT monitor. This new video shows the same engineer talking to a disassembled robot. In the game's fiction, it's a "standard UH3 articulated robot," and it "spontaneously developed a desire to socialize from observing human interaction." It gets creepier. Way creepier.
]]>I've spent the past few days F5ing Frictional's teaser site for their next game, which has been promising a new sci-fi game from Amnesia chaps. Well, my patience has finally been rewarded. The site is live with a scant amount of data about a thing called SOMA. All the information is based on the game's fiction, so there's no context to what we're seeing. All I know is it's sci-fi, and the machine at the heart of all this looks like a kid's TV bad guy: it is an evil monitor. Live action trailer entitled "Vivarium" is below.
]]>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.
]]>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.
]]>What if your computer wanted to kill you? Imagine entire worlds that contain nothing more important than a terrifying machine intelligence that absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead. Through the filter of aliens, robots and an Atari 2600, here are some thoughts on why it's good to run, to hide and to die.
]]>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.
]]>Last week, I ran the first half of my recent chat with Steve Gaynor, formerly of Irrational and 2K Marin, and now of indie studio The Fullbright Company - who are working on mysterious, ambitious, suburban-set non-combat first-person game Gone Home. Being as I am an investigative journalist par excellence, I decided that it would be appropriate to spend the second half of the interview forgoing questioning entirely in favour of simply shouting the names of other games at him. Games like Myst, Amnesia, Jurassic Park: Trespasser, Journey and Dear Esther. Rather than hanging up in disgust, he offered fascinating, thoughtful replies on the limits of interactivity in games and the sort of scale Gone Home is intended to operate on.
]]>There's a new Humble Bundle, wouldn't you believe it. And blimey, it's a good-un. I'm not in charge of deciding what's best, but this looks to me like one of the best bundles I've ever seen. Just look at this list: Amnesia, Limbo, Sword & Sworcery, Bastion, and Psychonauts. Seriously. And it has an absolutely brilliant video to promote it.
]]>Actually, no! Don't forget Amnesia! I'm only saying that for title fun. Remember Amnesia, or when I tie Anna into the creepy first-person adventure genre it won't make any sense. I've cleverly shot myself in my own foot, here. Nothing left to do but bloodily drag the appendage around, wailing at my own cleverosity. Are you remembering? Phew. So Dreampainter's Anna is set in and around a haunted Italian sawmill. It's an adventure game, so there's a fair amount of plucking things from the prettily-rendered environments, combining, jiggling, discarding, using the mouse pointer as you would a hand, pulling open drawers, etc. It has all the basic verbs of the adventure genre, and a few clever twists. It's a bit like Amnesia, wink wink.
]]>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.
Breaking news, if you were reading the internet a couple of days ago. Following a brief ARG, a tiny, hopeful squeak of detail has emerged for the next game from Amnesia devs Frictional. Frankly anything is more useful than 'it might be set in China, possibly', but in this case we have a couple of pieces of creepy, bloody concept art and a possible title.
That title? 'A Machine For Pigs.' Which sounds ever so slightly like a change of direction for George R.R. Martin's reader-mocking novels, but also appears to refer directly to the abbatoir-esque scenes in the concept art. But is that the real name, or just a codename? I've done some research into animal-slaughtering equipment and come up with some EXCITING ALTERNATIVES.
]]>Trouser-colour troublers Frictional Games, makers of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, have dramatically unveiled a website for their next game, pulling aside a metaphorical curtain, making thunder noises with their mouths and flicking the lights on and off. Scared? Nope? You're just made of steel, aren't you? I'd have thought a website with a blurry image with the word "Amnesia" on it in scary script and a link to a Google Map of China (click the image, if you dare) would have made you curl up into a ball. So what is going on? Well, I'm afraid I know as much as you do, apart from the two little more bits of information contained below this terrifying jump. Dare you? Mwahahaha...
]]>This week, a few mods that I've been monitoring but haven't had a chance to have a proper go at yet. In some cases, that's because they haven't been released yet, in others it's because the hours in every day are sadly limited, and as well as playing games and writing about them, I very occasionally sleep. I even venture outside from time to time, although admittedly not in the current political and meteorological climate. Too chilly. Too bitter. All too real. Onward to fantasy. Preferably with decent central heating.
]]>I remember when Frictional released Amnesia, there appeared to be a lot of talk about whether a game so relentlessly horrible would have a broad appeal. Refreshingly frank about both potential and actual sales figures, the team said 100,000 copies would be a dream figure. What, then, would they make of four times that number? It can only be assumed that dreams have piled upon other dreams, Inception-style, for 400,000 units have been shifted. So, yes, they have their dreams and almost half a million people now have fresh nightmares. I, for one, am now so afraid that doors will not open in the correct direction for a hasty retreat that I must check every single one when entering a new building. Just in case.
]]>Where were you all last week? I turned up and no one was here, honest! What's that? No, I'm not crossing my fingers behind my back, and you definitely didn't see him heading off on holiday. What nonsense. Anyway, to make up for it, here's an extra-long edition of Mod News to cover the past two weeks. This time: Crash Bandicoot, a Warcraft III art mod, a surprising number of trailers and a bizarre remake of Deus Ex...
]]>Super-spookfest Amnesia was one of our favourite games last year. Ridiculously scary, and mightily well crafted, the first person adventure had us shivering in our swivel chairs. And shitting in our trousers. (I think I'd gone a bit too mainstream in that previous sentence - rescued at the end.) So flipping hooray - they're re-releasing their Potato Sack DLC, Justine, as a free addition to the game. Along with other other goodies. And it gets even free-er today. If you head to the OnLive forum you can get a code that will allow you to play the full game for no pennies.
]]>What are you doing right now? Working? Smiling? Breathing? Well, stop with that nonsense and go straight over to the Steam page for The Potato Sack, a new bundle of indie games offering £108's worth of great indie games, including Amnesia, Super Meat Boy, Toki Tori (which you can read Kieron shouting about here), The Ball (which Jim and John talk about here) and Defense Grid: The Awakening, for a paltry £27. I'd eagerly pay £30 for those five games alone, and there are another eight in the pack.
]]>Late to the party as usual, I've been giving Amnesia a brief spin this week. I'm afraid I can't tough out the acting much longer (I must refer again to my recent rantette on such matters) but, y'know, good stuff in general.
What I definitely appreciate it for is a tiny little thing, just one single screen. It's something I've always loved about any scary game worth its salt - that pre-play settings/advice screen that firmly suggets the ideal conditions for it to become suitably fearful. "For the best experience..." Yes, yes! I want that. Tell me more.
]]>Amnesia might put a chill into the heart of many gamers, but it has nonetheless generated a rather heart-warming story for its developers. With nearly 200,000 units sold, the team are now hoping that that their minds haven't actually been eroded by a Lovecraftian monster: "This is a tremendous amount and more than we ever thought we would. Our "dream estimates" before release was something around 100k, and to be able to double that feels insane," says the latest blogpost. It also says: "The sales that we have had (and are having) are more than enough to motivate developing a game with the PC as the main (and even only) platform. Based on what we have seen, the online PC market is just getting bigger and bigger, and we are convinced we are far from the end of this growth. We think that other developers that consider making their game exclusive to a console might want to think again."
]]>Between finishing Amnesia and watching the final Twin Peaks episode, I had something of a nerve-racking day yesterday. Thankfully, Tom Chick at Fidgit has found a way to take the edge off the former. In short, he's found Frictional's footage of making various sound-effects in games. You'll find it below...
]]>Frictional's first full-length game, and a successor to their Penumbra series, comes out tomorrow. Amnesia is a combination of classic haunted castle horror with their unique first-person adventuring. Is it good? Is it scary? (Let me give you a clue: flipping yes, and oh good grief yes.) Read on to find out just exactly Wot it is that I Think.
]]>SvDvorak was first with the news that in the lead up to its release on the 8th, the Amnesia: The Dark Descent demo is out there. Don't look at it directly! Stay in the shadows! Be careful not to go insane! You can get the game on PC, beardy-PC or haircut-PC from any of these places. You should definitely give this a shot. I've only played a couple of hours of Amnesia and it's already the scariest game of 2010. And new demo, complete with developer voice-over, shows off exactly what the physics allows...
]]>Exciting news for people being scared out of their tiny fucking wits. Frictional - the maker of the Penumbra games - have just finished their new game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It'll be available on September 8th, from most of the direct download places or their own site. In short, story and atmosphere heavy first person game where you're pretty much defenceless. Have a nose at Walker's impressions of early code here. John is currently playing it for your edification, and I believe Quinns is reviewing it for Eurogamer, so expect to have their opinions emerge between now and then. In the mean time, here's a Going-Gold-gameplay-footage trailer...
]]>Amnesia, the new game from Frictional Games - they who brought us the Penumbra series - is due to be with us on the 8th September. I've had a play with the first third (of what must be a pretty big game), and have written up my thoughts for Eurogamer. It begins:
]]>Frictional Games' new horror title, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, is probably going to give me nightmares. They seem to be celebrating this with a new trailer, which sets the release date for Sepetember 8th, and reminds us why we should be interested in the gloomy spookiness of their game design. Feel vaguely disconcerted, below. (Also, the main site reveals that they are definitely planning a demo, which sounds like a good idea to me.)
]]>Frictional, they behind the fascinating Penumbra series, have put up a teaser trailer for their next game, Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Well, they call it a teaser. It's almost four minutes of game footage. It reveals that the game is going to work in a similar way to the Penumbras, first-person, but with a cursor on screen for interacting with the world. Which is splendid news, since it's been my constant lament that no one else in adventure gaming has had the scrap of sense to copy this, or license Frictional's self-made engine. It makes meaningful use of physics in first-person gaming, rather than leaving you feeling like some balloon-handed drunk crashing into everything. And you can lean. And get scared.
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