"Try to set the night on fire": Amnesia The Dark Descent Analysis

Part 2 of my creepy game medley comes from Amnesia, which is in some sense the spiritual successor to the Penumbra series (both come from Frictional Games).

Amnesia is a first person horror adventure game; you play as Daniel, a man who wakes up in a castle with no memory. After stumbling around for a few minutes you find a note left by yourself with instructions to kill someone and from there the game begins.

Like Penumbra there is a focus on real world physics: you can pick up objects, slam doors and try to solve puzzles. To its credit the puzzles while taking place in an unreal setting do have some real world logic to them and looking back I think there was only one puzzle I was hopelessly stuck on.

The level design of Amnesia is hub based, every section of the game has one overall obstacle for the player to get passed and several rooms or areas with the items or information needed to progress. What I like about this design is that it eliminates one of the main problems I have with most adventure games, which is that paranoid feeling that you forgot something that in five hours from now you'll have to remember about the statue you ran into during the first section of the game which will solve a puzzle that you are at now. Once you leave a section there is no need to return to a previous section.

The horror of Amnesia comes from the strange denizens of the castle. These slow freakish looking beings wander around trying to find you and once they spot you, they will give chase. Unlike other horror titles you cannot out run them and your only option is to find a place to hide and hope that they will forget about you. Unlike Penumbra there is no combat in the game and you will not be able to defend yourself. Now it sounds easy to hide from these creatures in the dark, however there is one other detail that you need to keep track of.

Besides monitoring your health you also need to keep track of your sanity. Whenever you see something that doesn't make sense such as monsters or strange events your sanity takes a hit. Also if you stay in complete darkness too long you will start to crack as well. As your sanity drains you'll start to hear voices and the screen will start to distort, at incredibly low levels you'll have a tough time controlling Daniel as well. Unlike health which is restored from healing items, sanity is recovered whenever the player progresses, either by solving a puzzle or entering a new area.

This creates an interesting dynamic with the creatures of the castle, to escape from them you have to hide in the dark but at the same time by hiding in the dark your sanity will decrease. You can light torches to provide some illumination and you have an oil lantern as well. However both supplies of light are limited and you have to be careful as you don't want to waste them. The game definitely delivers with tense moments as you run for your life which leads me to my main problem with the game.

The stakes are never high for Daniel as death doesn't end the game. There is no true "game over" screen, dying will just revert you back to the closest checkpoint and most likely the enemy in question will not be there this time. Once that fact sinks in, Amnesia loses some of its charm and the game stops being scary.

Another criticism I have for the game is that there isn't a whole lot that the player is going to be doing in the game which this kind of thought I'm going to expand on in another entry. I liked how the game doesn't hit you over the head with monsters to run away from and how it gives you time to catch your breath. I really wish that the horror aspects of the game were more blended into the puzzle sections, such as trying to get something to work while the monsters are roaming around.

Without spoiling things too much there are some sections where the player is chased through the environment which I really enjoyed as they offered something different to do in game. Overall I enjoyed Amnesia, it seems that we are getting less and less pure horror titles made and I need to get my horror fix whenever I can.

Josh