The game that launched a dozen millionaire YouTuber careers, helped usher the golden/cursed age of the let's play and marked a watershed moment in horror game design. Yet when The Dark Descent was busy being extolled as the scariest game evar I was that faint, squeaky "nuh-uh!" at the back of the congregation.
Despite being an avid fan of both horror and adventure games and, as a result, being an early fan of Frictional Games via the Penumbra series, I'd always been lukewarm on Amnesia and somewhat baffled by its monumental mainstream success. Besides not being scary (as I'd claim back then) it was just annoying to play through, with its sanity bar, incessant distortion effects, constant voiceover monologues that make you walk through molasses while listening, endless flashes to bright white in a game expected to be played in the dark, oil that burns out in 30 seconds and a character deathly allergic to any room with lighting below 2,000 lumens. I felt the horror gameplay was not only overly basic but bogged down with all this useless annoyance, as if they saw Far Cry 2’s infamous perpetually jamming guns and thought that’s what our whole game should be.
Well 14 years later, removed from the hype and coming off a newfound (or perhaps rediscovered) respect for this team off the back of SOMA and The Bunker I can see I was for the most part missing the forest for the trees on this. Those white screen flashes and molasses-walk voiceovers can still buzz off and the scripted distortions do drag on a bit now and then but mostly I was just too familiar with Penumbra and had grown bored with Frictional's tricks at precisely the same moment the internet got obsessed with them. With Penumbra now fading from my old man memory I can see now there’s a lot of good here that I'd been taking for granted.
A sanity bar still irks me a bit in principle because it feels like the game trying to tell me my own reaction, but not being able to look directly at enemies and mechanically making the player actually afraid of the dark itself are both genius, and having to balance two competing stats in trying not to go crazy and trying not to die adds a perceived weight to one's moment-to-moment decision making throughout. The lantern oil is particularly stingy at first but if you're even a little conservative you'll soon have more oil than you'll need, so that it's not annoying, yet very rarely have enough at once to feel comfortable. Not to mention trying in vain to keep a dwindling flame alive in the depths of darkness is a powerful visual motif in line with the sanity theme and the writing's Lovecraftian ambitions.
An organically induced fear of the dark and the management of light were near-perfected in last year's brilliant and relentlessly oppressive Amnesia: The Bunker, but we have to walk before we can run and The Dark Descent lays a solid groundwork before they were brave enough to really get sadistic on a gamer. Perhaps more notably it's Amnesia's first sequel, A Machine For Pigs, that made me rethink the light management most, in that one you can use your light indefinitely with no consequence and ironically that abundance makes it feel like something is sorely missing. In that game you never feel like you're in real danger, where here (and even far moreso in The Bunker) it never feels like you're really safe. For immersive horror that's nothing short of a triumph.
Most of all though I realize now that I was wrong about one thing above all else, and now I'm no longer too cool to admit the truth: The Dark Descent is scary. Hugging a wall, moving slowly through the dark, thinking you're really going to make it, hearing that music cue, making a break for it and frantically trying to open a door, close it again and block it on the other side is still some of the most exhilarating moments any game can offer. Frictional's beautifully wonky physics engine ensures that opening drawers never gets old and that doors will always max out your heart rate during a chase. When you're a bit fatigued with no-combat 'pursuer' enemy designs it's good to return to the masters and be reminded why it got so popular in the first place.
Puzzles mostly strike a good balance in turning your brain on enough to get the dopamine flowing without being likely to get you stuck (though I did once resort to the patented adventure game tradition of just trying every item on every other item - a jar on a string, of course, why didn't I think of that? Also that pipe wall puzzle was fucking stupid), the writing is pretty good throughout - enough to make me actually eager to be picking up another note - and the villain has possibly the most epic voice evar.
There's an abundance of muddy dungeon maze environments but somehow there's still enough variance and novelty in the puzzles and monster encounters to keep this descent compelling even 14 years, many sequels and countless imitators later. My return to Castle Brennenburg was a fruitful one beyond my expectations. It turns out sometimes it's not everyone else who was wrong, sometimes it just takes another 500 games in the log to begin to understand the genius you'd previously dismissed.
Despite being an avid fan of both horror and adventure games and, as a result, being an early fan of Frictional Games via the Penumbra series, I'd always been lukewarm on Amnesia and somewhat baffled by its monumental mainstream success. Besides not being scary (as I'd claim back then) it was just annoying to play through, with its sanity bar, incessant distortion effects, constant voiceover monologues that make you walk through molasses while listening, endless flashes to bright white in a game expected to be played in the dark, oil that burns out in 30 seconds and a character deathly allergic to any room with lighting below 2,000 lumens. I felt the horror gameplay was not only overly basic but bogged down with all this useless annoyance, as if they saw Far Cry 2’s infamous perpetually jamming guns and thought that’s what our whole game should be.
Well 14 years later, removed from the hype and coming off a newfound (or perhaps rediscovered) respect for this team off the back of SOMA and The Bunker I can see I was for the most part missing the forest for the trees on this. Those white screen flashes and molasses-walk voiceovers can still buzz off and the scripted distortions do drag on a bit now and then but mostly I was just too familiar with Penumbra and had grown bored with Frictional's tricks at precisely the same moment the internet got obsessed with them. With Penumbra now fading from my old man memory I can see now there’s a lot of good here that I'd been taking for granted.
A sanity bar still irks me a bit in principle because it feels like the game trying to tell me my own reaction, but not being able to look directly at enemies and mechanically making the player actually afraid of the dark itself are both genius, and having to balance two competing stats in trying not to go crazy and trying not to die adds a perceived weight to one's moment-to-moment decision making throughout. The lantern oil is particularly stingy at first but if you're even a little conservative you'll soon have more oil than you'll need, so that it's not annoying, yet very rarely have enough at once to feel comfortable. Not to mention trying in vain to keep a dwindling flame alive in the depths of darkness is a powerful visual motif in line with the sanity theme and the writing's Lovecraftian ambitions.
An organically induced fear of the dark and the management of light were near-perfected in last year's brilliant and relentlessly oppressive Amnesia: The Bunker, but we have to walk before we can run and The Dark Descent lays a solid groundwork before they were brave enough to really get sadistic on a gamer. Perhaps more notably it's Amnesia's first sequel, A Machine For Pigs, that made me rethink the light management most, in that one you can use your light indefinitely with no consequence and ironically that abundance makes it feel like something is sorely missing. In that game you never feel like you're in real danger, where here (and even far moreso in The Bunker) it never feels like you're really safe. For immersive horror that's nothing short of a triumph.
Most of all though I realize now that I was wrong about one thing above all else, and now I'm no longer too cool to admit the truth: The Dark Descent is scary. Hugging a wall, moving slowly through the dark, thinking you're really going to make it, hearing that music cue, making a break for it and frantically trying to open a door, close it again and block it on the other side is still some of the most exhilarating moments any game can offer. Frictional's beautifully wonky physics engine ensures that opening drawers never gets old and that doors will always max out your heart rate during a chase. When you're a bit fatigued with no-combat 'pursuer' enemy designs it's good to return to the masters and be reminded why it got so popular in the first place.
Puzzles mostly strike a good balance in turning your brain on enough to get the dopamine flowing without being likely to get you stuck (though I did once resort to the patented adventure game tradition of just trying every item on every other item - a jar on a string, of course, why didn't I think of that? Also that pipe wall puzzle was fucking stupid), the writing is pretty good throughout - enough to make me actually eager to be picking up another note - and the villain has possibly the most epic voice evar.
There's an abundance of muddy dungeon maze environments but somehow there's still enough variance and novelty in the puzzles and monster encounters to keep this descent compelling even 14 years, many sequels and countless imitators later. My return to Castle Brennenburg was a fruitful one beyond my expectations. It turns out sometimes it's not everyone else who was wrong, sometimes it just takes another 500 games in the log to begin to understand the genius you'd previously dismissed.
severe distaste for the effect this had on horror in gaming for a decade or more aside, i must admit that this is generally really solid. i had wondered how this might go for me coming back to it after some years away but i think i liked it just about as much as before, if not a bit extra.
Brennenburg Castle as a setting is a landmark in the medium in terms of aesthetics and an absolute joy to navigate through. the excellent use of lighting on top of the already powerful atmosphere meshes together well and makes this really impactful (until you see the monsters up close tbh)
puzzles are good for a game along these lines but are lacking in feedback at times. with some of the larger ones going across a whole hub and the levels it leads out into it isn't always clear what you just did or if you have made an effect of any kind. one notorious part of this replay was when i couldn't get an elevator to lower to a midway point and it was because i didn't fully match switches up like i had thought as a result of ones that i thought were going upwards were instead facing towards the center. not going to blame the game completely but with multiple moving parts i found myself moving between the different puzzle elements until i found ones that were still interactable which was a drag.
as things progress things take a turn for the more eccentric which flies in the face of how dark the background reveals itself to be. not sure how into it i am but not everything lands the ending and it doesn't tank the whole experience for me.
SOMA stays unbothered.
Brennenburg Castle as a setting is a landmark in the medium in terms of aesthetics and an absolute joy to navigate through. the excellent use of lighting on top of the already powerful atmosphere meshes together well and makes this really impactful (until you see the monsters up close tbh)
puzzles are good for a game along these lines but are lacking in feedback at times. with some of the larger ones going across a whole hub and the levels it leads out into it isn't always clear what you just did or if you have made an effect of any kind. one notorious part of this replay was when i couldn't get an elevator to lower to a midway point and it was because i didn't fully match switches up like i had thought as a result of ones that i thought were going upwards were instead facing towards the center. not going to blame the game completely but with multiple moving parts i found myself moving between the different puzzle elements until i found ones that were still interactable which was a drag.
as things progress things take a turn for the more eccentric which flies in the face of how dark the background reveals itself to be. not sure how into it i am but not everything lands the ending and it doesn't tank the whole experience for me.
SOMA stays unbothered.
𝟐𝟎𝟐𝟑 𝐒𝐩𝐨𝐨𝐤𝐞𝐲 𝐒𝐞𝐚𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐌𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐭𝐡𝐢𝐨𝐧
#𝟕 𝐀𝐦𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐚: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭
There are two ways I can look at this game in retrospect.
One way is a game on its own, taken away from the overwhelming influence it had on the survival horror genre in the 2010s, and in that way of viewing it, I would say that Amnesia is really fun and tens for the first half of the game; the rest is still fun but not particularly scary. The other way is looking at it through the retrospective lens of seeing the effect it had on survival horror; that being what I like to call the "Sit and Hide" subgenre. Where you have no real way of defending yourself so your only choice is to hide and hope to god the monster chasing you can go away. This style of horror has been done well I’m not saying it’s an awful sub-genre, this game did it pretty well like Alien Isolation where it understood that having no way of fighting the monster stalking you makes it scary but still gives the player options of crafting tools to use against the monster by distracting it or scaring it away. On the other end of that spectrum you have pretty much everyone else but for the sake of simplicity I’ll be using Outlast. Outlast is a game made for youtubers and no one else. It’s a game that saw the meteoric rise of Amnesia on YouTube and wanted to cash in on that surge of popularity and as a result they took all the wrong ideas that Amnesia had.
Amnesia works well because it understands what kind of game it is, it’s not a survival horror game it’s honestly more adjacent to an adventure/point and click game, at least to me. The main objective is to keep moving downwards through this magnificently horrifying looking castle and as you go down deeper and deeper into the darkness you’ll need to mix together acid to get past flesh walls or repair broken elevators, and to do so you’ll need to read notes to find where in the area items are and solve puzzles that sometimes require you to interact with the environmental physics. Many people call these parts the "boring bits" but I honestly prefer this over the monster stuff, drudging through this moody and dark castle looking for the parts you need while finding notes that reveal more of your lost past and the dark history of Brennenburg Castle was such a fun and suspenseful experience, along with the resource management of having to constantly find oil for your lantern and tinderboxes to light the darks halls of the castle in order to keep your sanity and stay out of the darkness left me feel more than satisfied with the gameplay; it’s horror however was just kinda eh. In-between exploring the castle’s moody gothic architecture you’ll have to deal with the monsters that are roaming the dark corridors they inhabit, and besides the first time they show up in the wine cellar; they never they never cease to not scare me.
With their first introduction in the wine cellar they had built up thanks to notes explaining what happened to these kidnappers and the fates they befell them; turning into monster that will hunt you down and kill you, and once you see what these people had become it’s honestly a bit scary and the amazing sound design adds so much to the horror of the situation. Outside of that one section however every other time the monsters showed up it usually just devolved into, me either impatiently waiting for them to leave and despawn so I can get back to exploring, or me getting impatient and just running past them and then hiding in the spot I needed to go to regardless. Once you get a real good look at these fuckers and learn that they despawn ones they finish their very simple patrol it becomes very monotonous the deal with, it’s like the vail just gets thrown away once you get to the second area and by the third area it just becomes trivial. Of course what people find scary is very subjective so it’s 100% a me thing but there's not much I can do about it so idk.
Besides the lack of scares it gave me, Amnesia left me feeling very fulfilled and makes me wanna try out the rest of the series really badly. I’m honestly surprised I enjoyed this as much as I’ve played the majority of other games like Amnesia and I never really cared for them, and in the case of something like Outlast; for what little time I put into that game I genuinely despised it. So maybe this is one of those cases where Amnesia worked really well but everyone else took the wrong reasons for why it worked.
#𝟕 𝐀𝐦𝐧𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐚: 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐤 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐜𝐞𝐧𝐭
There are two ways I can look at this game in retrospect.
One way is a game on its own, taken away from the overwhelming influence it had on the survival horror genre in the 2010s, and in that way of viewing it, I would say that Amnesia is really fun and tens for the first half of the game; the rest is still fun but not particularly scary. The other way is looking at it through the retrospective lens of seeing the effect it had on survival horror; that being what I like to call the "Sit and Hide" subgenre. Where you have no real way of defending yourself so your only choice is to hide and hope to god the monster chasing you can go away. This style of horror has been done well I’m not saying it’s an awful sub-genre, this game did it pretty well like Alien Isolation where it understood that having no way of fighting the monster stalking you makes it scary but still gives the player options of crafting tools to use against the monster by distracting it or scaring it away. On the other end of that spectrum you have pretty much everyone else but for the sake of simplicity I’ll be using Outlast. Outlast is a game made for youtubers and no one else. It’s a game that saw the meteoric rise of Amnesia on YouTube and wanted to cash in on that surge of popularity and as a result they took all the wrong ideas that Amnesia had.
Amnesia works well because it understands what kind of game it is, it’s not a survival horror game it’s honestly more adjacent to an adventure/point and click game, at least to me. The main objective is to keep moving downwards through this magnificently horrifying looking castle and as you go down deeper and deeper into the darkness you’ll need to mix together acid to get past flesh walls or repair broken elevators, and to do so you’ll need to read notes to find where in the area items are and solve puzzles that sometimes require you to interact with the environmental physics. Many people call these parts the "boring bits" but I honestly prefer this over the monster stuff, drudging through this moody and dark castle looking for the parts you need while finding notes that reveal more of your lost past and the dark history of Brennenburg Castle was such a fun and suspenseful experience, along with the resource management of having to constantly find oil for your lantern and tinderboxes to light the darks halls of the castle in order to keep your sanity and stay out of the darkness left me feel more than satisfied with the gameplay; it’s horror however was just kinda eh. In-between exploring the castle’s moody gothic architecture you’ll have to deal with the monsters that are roaming the dark corridors they inhabit, and besides the first time they show up in the wine cellar; they never they never cease to not scare me.
With their first introduction in the wine cellar they had built up thanks to notes explaining what happened to these kidnappers and the fates they befell them; turning into monster that will hunt you down and kill you, and once you see what these people had become it’s honestly a bit scary and the amazing sound design adds so much to the horror of the situation. Outside of that one section however every other time the monsters showed up it usually just devolved into, me either impatiently waiting for them to leave and despawn so I can get back to exploring, or me getting impatient and just running past them and then hiding in the spot I needed to go to regardless. Once you get a real good look at these fuckers and learn that they despawn ones they finish their very simple patrol it becomes very monotonous the deal with, it’s like the vail just gets thrown away once you get to the second area and by the third area it just becomes trivial. Of course what people find scary is very subjective so it’s 100% a me thing but there's not much I can do about it so idk.
Besides the lack of scares it gave me, Amnesia left me feeling very fulfilled and makes me wanna try out the rest of the series really badly. I’m honestly surprised I enjoyed this as much as I’ve played the majority of other games like Amnesia and I never really cared for them, and in the case of something like Outlast; for what little time I put into that game I genuinely despised it. So maybe this is one of those cases where Amnesia worked really well but everyone else took the wrong reasons for why it worked.
It's pretty damn solid up until that last act I think it gets a little weird and feels rushed at the ending in particular. It's around where it stopped feeling spooky too so while it probably made sense to end there I think they could've done it better. The vibes and tone are on point and the story's actual end choices felt like any could work though I think the one which requires the most effort fits the most since no one in this story is a good person and it's a nice touch for another puzzle.
This is one of the scariest games in recent memory. The loading screen recommends you turn the lights off and play with headphones, something I'll strongly echo. Amnesia: The Dark Descent's puzzles aren't especially impressive and the voice acting can range from convincing to goofy, but the atmosphere Frictional has infused into the experience is as powerful as they come. It's a tale of terror that's menacing and disturbing from the very first moments, and only amplifies the further you progress. Any fan of horror, every Lovecraft fan, and any with even a hint of curiosity should give Amnesia a shot. Few games are able to conjure up an atmosphere this genuinely frightening.
Basicamente o melhor jogo de terror que existe, ambientação imersiva, e cheia de tensão, inimigos amedrontadores, fases de cair o queixo, e uma história de arrepiar! Amei esse jogo, com toda certeza ele inovou a fórmula dos jogos de terror, ainda bem que existem os indies.
Great little horror game. It pioneered the gameplay/reaction era of Youtube, back when gameplay videos were focused on the game itself and not on the player.
Gameplay and controls hold extremely well for 2024, even if graphics are clearly dated. Sound design is good for the type of game.
Overall would really recommend it for any horror fans. I would eventually like to play its sequels, but I think the original still holds quite well.
Gameplay and controls hold extremely well for 2024, even if graphics are clearly dated. Sound design is good for the type of game.
Overall would really recommend it for any horror fans. I would eventually like to play its sequels, but I think the original still holds quite well.
Incredible game. One of my all time favorites but definitely within the horror genre. Very well done but very scary which can make it hard for many people to finish. It's worth it though
Average night in Prussia (1839)
Some actually good horror game that does not rely solely on jumpscares. Big ups to the devs!
One of the most immersive games ever, it truly feels like exploring a occult secret man was never meant to know. A truly haunting trip with ample existential dread.
Near the end of the game, I installed a new operating system while forgetting that the game doesn't have cloud sync. Therefore, I lost my progress and abandoned it, but not because the game was bad.
Near the end of the game, I installed a new operating system while forgetting that the game doesn't have cloud sync. Therefore, I lost my progress and abandoned it, but not because the game was bad.
I can’t believe it took me almost 15 years to play the ‘scariest game of all time’ that kickstarted the careers of countless YouTube let’s players. Thankfully, ‘Amnesia’ turned out to be much, much more than a cheap jumpscare fest that spawned tons of mediocre “you can’t fight back” horror games after its initial wave of success.
I love the pacing of the game. You’re given enough time to breathe and relax (?) between the properly stressful parts to sustain the player’s interest for the 8 hours or it takes to reach the final credits. The enemies (that you can’t fight, naturally) are used wisely and don’t jump at you at every corner, rather creep in the darkness around maze-like levels, making you fear they might be lurking behind every corner. This really heightens the tension, and even after figuring out what triggers and what breaks enemy AI and using this information to your advantage they remain scary opponents rather than annoying obstacles to run past.
Not unlike many representatives of the survival horror genre, here you also have to manage your resources, although rather than bullets and grenades they are access to light (lamp oil and tinderboxes) and sanity. Even on normal difficulty (recommended by the devs) on occasion I would run out of lamp oil and would have to desperately wander around the level in search of a container, with Daniel panting loudly and quickly losing his grasp on reality, which is expressed by the changing, wavy visuals.
The game’s greatest strength - next to the wonderful atmosphere, interesting puzzles and clever level design - is the story. I was genuinely eager to find the next note that would provide some more backstory for Daniel and Alexander of Brennenberg. The lore is quite rich and the consecutive revelations regarding Daniel’s role in the castle made me increasingly uneasy about controlling this particular character, which is not a wholly original trope in the world of horror stories in general, but it was executed quite well in ‘Amnesia’.
The game is ugly as sin, but that exacerbates the oppressiveness of the environments and increases the likelihood of getting lost, further increasing the stress levels (I never thought it reached the point of annoyance, though). The sound design is exquisite, always keeping you on your toes.
I love the pacing of the game. You’re given enough time to breathe and relax (?) between the properly stressful parts to sustain the player’s interest for the 8 hours or it takes to reach the final credits. The enemies (that you can’t fight, naturally) are used wisely and don’t jump at you at every corner, rather creep in the darkness around maze-like levels, making you fear they might be lurking behind every corner. This really heightens the tension, and even after figuring out what triggers and what breaks enemy AI and using this information to your advantage they remain scary opponents rather than annoying obstacles to run past.
Not unlike many representatives of the survival horror genre, here you also have to manage your resources, although rather than bullets and grenades they are access to light (lamp oil and tinderboxes) and sanity. Even on normal difficulty (recommended by the devs) on occasion I would run out of lamp oil and would have to desperately wander around the level in search of a container, with Daniel panting loudly and quickly losing his grasp on reality, which is expressed by the changing, wavy visuals.
The game’s greatest strength - next to the wonderful atmosphere, interesting puzzles and clever level design - is the story. I was genuinely eager to find the next note that would provide some more backstory for Daniel and Alexander of Brennenberg. The lore is quite rich and the consecutive revelations regarding Daniel’s role in the castle made me increasingly uneasy about controlling this particular character, which is not a wholly original trope in the world of horror stories in general, but it was executed quite well in ‘Amnesia’.
The game is ugly as sin, but that exacerbates the oppressiveness of the environments and increases the likelihood of getting lost, further increasing the stress levels (I never thought it reached the point of annoyance, though). The sound design is exquisite, always keeping you on your toes.
[review wip]
Although may look a bit dated for some, this game still stands tall to be one of the most significant indie horror games, though there are some invoked mechanics that do not actually exist, meant as a psychological provokation to fool the player into thinking something worse could happen, but despite that, it's been a really interesting ride into the early 2010s, because there are some things that apparently you can't find easily in horror games that are made in the next decade. More than a straightforward horror experience, this is more of a immersive ride into a dreadful castle with simulated psychological effects of the protagonist, one of the best visual components i enjoyed in this game. The story around the second half of the game may get predictable towards the end due to the premise, but it's better than nothing. The cutscenes are all in real-time, just as the whole game, so no static cutscenes or anything like that. It has bit of its flaws, of course, for having PS2-era ish graphics, but being a player who used to play lots of old PC games it definitely suited me the same.
There is also a one-shot short expansion called Justine which is separate from the main game's story, presenting itself as a side story taking place in the same time period. I'll make a review of it once i'll beat it one day because of its inability to save the game, even if its length should actually manage to fit in, for example, a nightly play session.
I'd recommend to get into this if you want to know how horror indie games were done in its earlier years (exception of Slender, being an example of an once popular phenomenon but awfully developed game just to attract attention), but if you want a more curated horror title that stands out for being creative with its choices, then probably this isn't for you because of its more traditional approach. Though, i'd give 4.5 stars because this game is kept alive in its next years thanks to its Custom Story mod support which allows you to create your own mods using the game's engine toolkit, allowing yourself to unleash your imagination and imagining yourself working on DLCs.
Although may look a bit dated for some, this game still stands tall to be one of the most significant indie horror games, though there are some invoked mechanics that do not actually exist, meant as a psychological provokation to fool the player into thinking something worse could happen, but despite that, it's been a really interesting ride into the early 2010s, because there are some things that apparently you can't find easily in horror games that are made in the next decade. More than a straightforward horror experience, this is more of a immersive ride into a dreadful castle with simulated psychological effects of the protagonist, one of the best visual components i enjoyed in this game. The story around the second half of the game may get predictable towards the end due to the premise, but it's better than nothing. The cutscenes are all in real-time, just as the whole game, so no static cutscenes or anything like that. It has bit of its flaws, of course, for having PS2-era ish graphics, but being a player who used to play lots of old PC games it definitely suited me the same.
There is also a one-shot short expansion called Justine which is separate from the main game's story, presenting itself as a side story taking place in the same time period. I'll make a review of it once i'll beat it one day because of its inability to save the game, even if its length should actually manage to fit in, for example, a nightly play session.
I'd recommend to get into this if you want to know how horror indie games were done in its earlier years (exception of Slender, being an example of an once popular phenomenon but awfully developed game just to attract attention), but if you want a more curated horror title that stands out for being creative with its choices, then probably this isn't for you because of its more traditional approach. Though, i'd give 4.5 stars because this game is kept alive in its next years thanks to its Custom Story mod support which allows you to create your own mods using the game's engine toolkit, allowing yourself to unleash your imagination and imagining yourself working on DLCs.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a game that I can not say in good faith that I hate. However, I definitely did not enjoy playing it either. Amnesia is the embodiment of the survival horror genre. For that, many of its strongest features were aspects I enjoyed the least about it.
Picking up and finding oil while managing your supply is a great way to add intensity to the game. However, oil is very scarce and matchsticks are practically useless unless you're in situations where there is no intensity. Often unless you look up a guide, you'll find yourself miserably exploring the dark corners of this mansion while being chased by a naked, ugly, and homeless looking man that gets old very quickly. This is even more annoying when you're tasked to also do puzzles in the dark, find notes in the dark, and micromanage your fuel and sanity. It becomes more of a chore than it's worth to play the game. Most horror in this game is derived from your own manufactured anticipation and expectations that something terrible will happen, and then getting shocked when it does inevitably happen. This stopped early on for me and only reappeared once the water levels sprung up, which was a welcoming surprise.
However, the atmosphere and environment of this game are absolutely incredible that is only enhanced by the addition of movable objects, and physically opening and closing doors. The puzzles are fairly straightforward, and the concept behind this game, amnesia, is enjoyable if you're able to find all the notes and understand the story in its entirety. Overall though, I don't particularly recommend this game but I can't deny that if you love this type of game, you will love Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
Picking up and finding oil while managing your supply is a great way to add intensity to the game. However, oil is very scarce and matchsticks are practically useless unless you're in situations where there is no intensity. Often unless you look up a guide, you'll find yourself miserably exploring the dark corners of this mansion while being chased by a naked, ugly, and homeless looking man that gets old very quickly. This is even more annoying when you're tasked to also do puzzles in the dark, find notes in the dark, and micromanage your fuel and sanity. It becomes more of a chore than it's worth to play the game. Most horror in this game is derived from your own manufactured anticipation and expectations that something terrible will happen, and then getting shocked when it does inevitably happen. This stopped early on for me and only reappeared once the water levels sprung up, which was a welcoming surprise.
However, the atmosphere and environment of this game are absolutely incredible that is only enhanced by the addition of movable objects, and physically opening and closing doors. The puzzles are fairly straightforward, and the concept behind this game, amnesia, is enjoyable if you're able to find all the notes and understand the story in its entirety. Overall though, I don't particularly recommend this game but I can't deny that if you love this type of game, you will love Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
No início eu daria uma nota menor para o jogo por conta de ele parecer curto e da pouca experiência que tive com ele, mas conforme eu fui jogando, fui me apegando ao jogo, o jeito que as coisas acontecem, e conforme você vai
entendendo o jogo, você vai gostando mais. Os puzzles do jogo são medianos, não é nada que vai te fazer surtar com o jogo e isso é algo bom, e o terror é incrível, você sente muito mais suspense e medo do que toma susto por jumpscare por exemplo, e a história é muito boa, ela vai se montando na sua cabeça enquanto você avança no jogo. Considerando tudo isso, o jogo é muito bom e traz uma ótima experiência.
entendendo o jogo, você vai gostando mais. Os puzzles do jogo são medianos, não é nada que vai te fazer surtar com o jogo e isso é algo bom, e o terror é incrível, você sente muito mais suspense e medo do que toma susto por jumpscare por exemplo, e a história é muito boa, ela vai se montando na sua cabeça enquanto você avança no jogo. Considerando tudo isso, o jogo é muito bom e traz uma ótima experiência.
I definitely wasn't expecting this game to be this good. The gimmicks revolving the thrill were very well-made, as well as the level design. Also, darkness being both your weakness and your strength was a clever spark of creativity. Unfortunately it drags a bit by the latter third, turning its focus directly into developing the plot(which wasn't that good tbh) instead of breadcrumbing it as was done in the beginning. Still absolutely worth the experience.
I used to watch other people play Amnesia: The Dark Descent when it was popular to do so, skip some years and I decided to try it for myself. There’s no doubt that it showed its age, but that was to be expected. I loved the Lovecraftian themes in the story, I ate up every little morsel I could. As for the gameplay itself, I think the sanity was done well—many other games have tried to replicate it for a reason—but it’s certainly an acquired taste. The physics based puzzles were a favourite, Frictional's mechanics always satisfying to me.
While the enemies were fine, I will say it lost something after realising most of the monsters despawned after not seeing me for a few minutes. It was easy to avoid them, danger mostly an illusion. Not entirely a bad thing, but rather than being obstacles that posed a threat, they were obstacles that wasted time.
While the enemies were fine, I will say it lost something after realising most of the monsters despawned after not seeing me for a few minutes. It was easy to avoid them, danger mostly an illusion. Not entirely a bad thing, but rather than being obstacles that posed a threat, they were obstacles that wasted time.
Some day we'll be brave enough to have a conversation about the corrosive influence of Eternal Darkness on horror games.
pewdiepie will pay for his crimes in hell
It's important for me to preface this review with the following;
I do not play a lot of horror games. I had not played, let alone finished, many horror games before this. Mostly, this comes down to me being a very naturally anxious person who is stupidly easy to scare, thus I struggle to stomach them, so until this the only horror games I had completed were 'Omori', 'i live under your house', 'System Shock 2' and a few 'Five Nights at Freddy's' games. With this qualifier presented, I can say with confidence that Frictional Game's 'Amnesia: The Dark Descent' is easily the scariest game I've ever encountered, and in spite of some tiny flaws elicited such a strong emotional reaction from me that it would be remiss for me to not consider it among the medium's finest.
At first, the prospect of a 'sanity' metre—an idea found immeditley quaint for lovecraftian games soon after the admittedly novel antics of 'Eternal Darkness' found their way dancing atop the GameCube—and the titular trope making pose as the story hook had me worrying a potential glaze over was inbound, a worry quickly sedated by a realisation I had early in the game that even with all the red pus germinating in the walls, 'The Dark Descent' had been able to demonstrate a shocking level of restraint in the way it chose to unnerve me thus far. While worry would not be truly cured until later, Frictional's dedication to pacing had me intrigued enough to fully immerse myself in both the excellent atmosphere and writing. The technical quality of the writing found in the notes is quite the admirable one, since the game would have done perfectly fine narratively without it, hooking players into what is presently the story of a man going nuts in the dark trying to set his bad deeds right. The added digresional textures of colonial guilt and characterisation were certainly elevatory when they could easily have been detrimental, leaving me satisifed with their inclusion.
'Amnesia' is also quite effectivley dreary, with fantastic lighting and crestfallen texture work adorning it's traumatisied and despotic halls. Structures held a balance between intimidation and the alien tipping on both ends against the players comfort. Rooms can be tight and dark, spotted with brief drips of light which can become a pool only at the daring cost of the player's resources, or they can be looming, oversized and intimidating. This atmosphere of oppresion is essential to a horror experience, and well adjusted here.
The alleviation of my minor irritation at the value of a 'sanity' mechanic came with my introduction to the monsters of Brennenburg. Now, this doesn't happen until a few hours in due to the commitment to narrative pacing present in 'The Dark Descent' but they add a lot to the game. First, they give the "sanity" mechanic a purpose beyond the superficial; as maxing out the metre renders the game unplayable, the sheer act of looking at the monsters will raise the gameplay into a horrid state, meaning the player is forced to keep their eyes off them! This is genius because it allows the player's imagination to do a lot of work for Frictional, having me wholeheartedly afraid of them from entry to exit. While the bugs-crawling-across-the-monitor illusion and other more superfluous consequences of loosing 'sanity' are silly, this contextualisation of the mechanic with a core player struggle was too complimentary to the rest of the game for me to dislike the feature. Wish they'd call it 'stress' or something though because 'sanity' still sounds mega silly.
Some puzzles are a little dense, but all are ultimately satisfying, there's even some instances of emergent gameplay, which is always welcome! Really I have nothing to complain about here. Frictional have delivered a subperb, clever, and hauntingly beautiful horror masterpiece here which still holds up well over a decade later! This, my friends—let us waggle our judging fingers at Bloober team as they piss all over team silent's legacy—is the key to a memorable and powerful horror experience, subtlety and considered, oppresive mechanics! Nothing short of excellent.
I do not play a lot of horror games. I had not played, let alone finished, many horror games before this. Mostly, this comes down to me being a very naturally anxious person who is stupidly easy to scare, thus I struggle to stomach them, so until this the only horror games I had completed were 'Omori', 'i live under your house', 'System Shock 2' and a few 'Five Nights at Freddy's' games. With this qualifier presented, I can say with confidence that Frictional Game's 'Amnesia: The Dark Descent' is easily the scariest game I've ever encountered, and in spite of some tiny flaws elicited such a strong emotional reaction from me that it would be remiss for me to not consider it among the medium's finest.
At first, the prospect of a 'sanity' metre—an idea found immeditley quaint for lovecraftian games soon after the admittedly novel antics of 'Eternal Darkness' found their way dancing atop the GameCube—and the titular trope making pose as the story hook had me worrying a potential glaze over was inbound, a worry quickly sedated by a realisation I had early in the game that even with all the red pus germinating in the walls, 'The Dark Descent' had been able to demonstrate a shocking level of restraint in the way it chose to unnerve me thus far. While worry would not be truly cured until later, Frictional's dedication to pacing had me intrigued enough to fully immerse myself in both the excellent atmosphere and writing. The technical quality of the writing found in the notes is quite the admirable one, since the game would have done perfectly fine narratively without it, hooking players into what is presently the story of a man going nuts in the dark trying to set his bad deeds right. The added digresional textures of colonial guilt and characterisation were certainly elevatory when they could easily have been detrimental, leaving me satisifed with their inclusion.
'Amnesia' is also quite effectivley dreary, with fantastic lighting and crestfallen texture work adorning it's traumatisied and despotic halls. Structures held a balance between intimidation and the alien tipping on both ends against the players comfort. Rooms can be tight and dark, spotted with brief drips of light which can become a pool only at the daring cost of the player's resources, or they can be looming, oversized and intimidating. This atmosphere of oppresion is essential to a horror experience, and well adjusted here.
The alleviation of my minor irritation at the value of a 'sanity' mechanic came with my introduction to the monsters of Brennenburg. Now, this doesn't happen until a few hours in due to the commitment to narrative pacing present in 'The Dark Descent' but they add a lot to the game. First, they give the "sanity" mechanic a purpose beyond the superficial; as maxing out the metre renders the game unplayable, the sheer act of looking at the monsters will raise the gameplay into a horrid state, meaning the player is forced to keep their eyes off them! This is genius because it allows the player's imagination to do a lot of work for Frictional, having me wholeheartedly afraid of them from entry to exit. While the bugs-crawling-across-the-monitor illusion and other more superfluous consequences of loosing 'sanity' are silly, this contextualisation of the mechanic with a core player struggle was too complimentary to the rest of the game for me to dislike the feature. Wish they'd call it 'stress' or something though because 'sanity' still sounds mega silly.
Some puzzles are a little dense, but all are ultimately satisfying, there's even some instances of emergent gameplay, which is always welcome! Really I have nothing to complain about here. Frictional have delivered a subperb, clever, and hauntingly beautiful horror masterpiece here which still holds up well over a decade later! This, my friends—let us waggle our judging fingers at Bloober team as they piss all over team silent's legacy—is the key to a memorable and powerful horror experience, subtlety and considered, oppresive mechanics! Nothing short of excellent.
Good for the day - too simple for now.
Um jogo que todo mundo já ouviu falar e um dos mais influentes da década passada. Um deleite num tom e atmosfera que não fraquejam em momento nenhum, assim como a história contada aos poucos e consegue te dar umas boas e fortes reações. É impressionante como se esse jogo fosse adaptado para um livro (e tomando cuidado na escrita) esse jogo se passaria facilmente como uma história das BOAS do Lovecraft
I hated playing this game, but I think that's what it wanted me to feel so I can let that slide (I don't do well with horror games). I thought some of the puzzles were neat, but overall the gameplay was pretty bland, mostly walking to new areas. The Justine DLC was an interesting concept too, but I did not want to try going through it again because I messed up towards the end and would have to restart. The game is worth a play for sure, but I wouldn't say it's ground breaking.
Genuinely terrifying, a horror classic for a reason.
barrels
One of the best indie horror games for me. Still even holds up to this day, the atmosphere is hauntingly beautiful and I saw myself invested in the story for once.
Only big issue I can mention is the encounters with the monsters, the AI is subpar at best and most events feel too scripted. Other than that, great horror game.
Only big issue I can mention is the encounters with the monsters, the AI is subpar at best and most events feel too scripted. Other than that, great horror game.
One of the best survival horror games I've played. While it didn't scare me, it was somewhat nerve wreaking at times. You can't defend yourself from the monsters in the game, you have to run and hide. The puzzles weren't too hard to figure out. Most of the ones that took me some time were the kind where it was easy to miss a item you needed or a trap door in the ceiling and I didn't look up to see it. The story was pretty basic, graphics are good, and the music and sound was pretty good.
This is the pioneer of the walking simulator games and uses that style to tell a common Amnesia story with an unique enough story that separates itself from the pack, if your a horror fan, Amnesia the Dark Descent is one of the quintessential horror games you have to play.
Idzie się posrać w gacie ze strachu (ja tak zrobiłam (nie żartuje))
Honestly this game is a certified classic