Erkki

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

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This might be something to look forward to in 2010: http://www.amnesiagame.com/

The next game from the makers of Penumbra. Although from some interviews I watched what they learned from Penumbra is that players want more action/combat, so I'm not sure if they can keep what made Penumbra interesting and not end up with a run-of-the-mill survival horror game.

[€dit] There's an interview about the new game here.

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I was half expecting:

The Makers of Final Fantasy Present...

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

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Actually, from that interview I linked to:

5. At the Penumbra series the player was encouraged to run/hide from monsters , while in the first Penumbra it was possible to kill the dogs, in the second game killing the monsters was impossible (without a patch/mod) , how Amnesia will be compare to those games ? will the player be able/encouraged to kill monsters ? will Amnesia be more action oriented (fighting/climbing/jumping etc…) ? And if so what weapons or/and skills can we expect ?

If you asked this question a year ago, I would have answered that Amnesia would be more action oriented. We spent about a year creating prototypes and have tested a lot of different approaches, what we originally wanted was to avoid some of the very tedious parts of developing a game like Penumbra. With Penumbra almost every instance of the game is uniquely created, each puzzle has to be done from the ground up, each event and so fort. It’s not like a First Person Shooter where you can put a lot of gameplay hours into having the player shoot enemies and once you have set it all up it can be re-used multiple times.

One idea we had was to add a bit more combat, to go back to the Overture idea that the player would always have a last resort of defence. This time we did the combat a bit easier and worked a lot on how the AI should behave, so that it gave the player a better chance to sneak or do a bit of battling to get out of a tricky situation and then hide again. But during testing we had the same problem as always, half thought it was way too easy and the other half thought it was very difficult. Adding to this we felt that it was not as fun as we had hope, that at best it would be like a poor-mans version of Condemned, as a small developer we really have to try and be unique, we can’t afford having a lot of “well it’s like game X only worse” comments.

So if comparing to the Penumbra games, Amnesia will be most similar to Black Plague. But with the differences that enemy encounters will always be very short, more of an obstacle to overcome, than levels filled with patrolling enemies.

So seems like there's not need to worry that it will be a very action-oriented game. Also, a video:

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More awesome video footage.

JEHPwAvrc_U

I can't wait to play this. Looks like it's pretty much in the vein of Penumbra and Call of Cthulhu: DCotE.

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It seems like the player is following a script, peeking out at the right times, doing everything really slowly, etc. I wonder how the game will play if you're not playing like such a pussy. Anyway, this is sadly another of the games I would really like to play, but am too easily scared by. The door-barricading reminded me of the rage about Valve demonstrating how you could stack stuff in front of the door in HL2, and then in the end you couldn't. And that reminds me of the fluid simulation system in Red Faction that they demonstrated in a ton of videos, and then the game was released without it.

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It seems like the player is following a script, peeking out at the right times, doing everything really slowly, etc. I wonder how the game will play if you're not playing like such a pussy.
Yeah, that's true, but in Penumbra, you pretty much got killed (in some places) if you didn't play like a pussy.
The door-barricading reminded me of the rage about Valve demonstrating how you could stack stuff in front of the door in HL2, and then in the end you couldn't.

I remember something similar about DCotE. They did implement that, but it was a more discrete and scripted thing than what they showed originally. There was a sequence where it was pretty much required that you block some specific doors. And maybe there was something else later, but it was definitely less physical than they wanted it to be.

I can't remember all the details about door-blocking in Penumbra, but it may have been possible. At least it slowed some enemies down, I think. That game had the best interactive physics in a first person game that I can think of, and I believe Frictional can pull off whatever they're showing off in these videos.

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Yeah, that's true, but in Penumbra, you pretty much got killed (in some places) if you didn't play like a pussy.

I played it on easy, and the moment I stopped being a pussy I realized the monster couldn't kill me with one hit the game became not scary at all... :blink:

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I played it on easy, and the moment I stopped being a pussy I realized the monster couldn't kill me with one hit the game became not scary at all... :blink:

on hard, it could kill you with two hits. and using that hammer against it wasn't really easy.

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It didn't even kill you with one hit on hard? Now I feel silly! :hah:

Which monster are you talking about?

I was talking about the dogs in Penumbra: Overture

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Well, they seem to have taken a 180 turn, and a good one. Instead of focusing on combat, Amnesia is not going to have any combat. (link to EG hands on)

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It still has the worst name ever. Some indie adventure games can be excused for names like this, but not anything coming from an actual proper studio.

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4 people (or whatever their exact number) is a proper studio compared to other indie games?

[edit] Also, considering "proper" naming: Thi4f, 5:0 Destination etc. ... I'm not sure "Amnesia: Dark Descent" is such an unforgivable fuck-up title. I guess their games are a bit weak in the story department as well, though, so maybe the title does give that away...

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A demo for all kinds of PC-s is out (and release date is 8th). I just played it on my MacIntosh Portable Computer. It's scary, but so far it has been mostly just wondering around trying to stay in the light and a couple of puzzly things along the way. It might be better than the first Penumbra, looks and sounds better at least.

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It's now activated on steam, on the main site it said something like download coming 8 AM GMT.

RPS Wot I Think is quite positive (just from the initial paragraphs, haven't read the whole thing yet).

[edit]

It’s Thief III’s Cradle as a full game.

Quite high praise.

Edited by Erkki

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I played the demo a little, it looks like it's all about staying in the light or else you'll go insane, the thing is....

I'm not really in the mood for such a "stressful" game now... ;(

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I don't know about anyone else, but the

invisible water monster

in the demo scared the crap out of me. Very well executed.

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played the intro yesterday, and i have to say: there are definitely some mechanics that are extremely effective.

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Played the beginning of the game a little bit and I'm a lot more impressed than I was with the demo. It is scary and I feel a lot of what John Walker wrote about in RPS's take on the game.

It may also be because I'm playing properly now, in a completely dark room with the door closed, headphones, behind a big monitor connected to my macbook pro* instead of just a mouse attached to the laptop. Not playing the demo like that also made me try to grope at the edges of the systems,

especially around the invisible water beast

, which ruined the suspense somewhat.

* my desktop PC is busted, will be getting a new one soon.

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Finished it. Truly a great horror game, one of the best. It combines the physics-based interaction from Penumbra and a sanity system and atmosphere similar to Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. For most of the game you have no idea if a hostile monster might appear around the next corner and since you can't fight back... this combined with the need to stay in the light to restore sanity makes the game very tense. There were only a couple of areas where I felt relatively safe and indeed no monsters appeared there; there was also one area where I was constantly expecting something bad to happen, but nothing threatening did.

The Eurogamer review said that by the end of the game, the monsters ceased to be monsters and became 3D models, but this never happened for me. As you are discouraged from even looking at the monsters, I think I didn't even see some of the monsters that I could have seen, as I was so concentrated on running away. So I only have a vague idea about how many different monsters there are.

If you get all the three different endings,

each ending gives you a password that lets you open a RAR file with some design documents, concept art and videos from the games development. From those it can be gleaned that at first they had more ideas for this game, such as NPC interaction, some combat, etc. I would really love to see more adventure games like this -- mostly physics based -- even in non-horror genres.

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How merciful is the game with the resources? If I use one match too many will I be so screwed I'll have to restart or something like that?;(

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How merciful is the game with the resources? If I use one match too many will I be so screwed I'll have to restart or something like that?;(

I don't think the game would make you restart. Though I don't know what it does if you completely run out. In my experience, (just in case, I added spoiler tags since I would consider details about resources in a survival horror game mild spoilers)

the resources we're just enough (if you looked in corners and drawers and stuff) that you feel like you are low on them but you never quite run out. There was one place where I did almost run out but it only added to the tension as I had to make my way across a dark level and solve a puzzle with barely any sanity left. Also if you get killed it seems you will not lose any progress except geographical so you won't get your recently spent tinderboxes back.

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