Mature Content Advisory
This game is only suitable for individuals 17 years of age or older.
- Site: Amnesia: The Dark Descent
- Publisher: Frictional Games
- Developer: Frictional Games
- Genre: Adventure
Game Media
By Brad Cook
Turn off the lights. Put on your favorite pair of headphones. Launch Amnesia: The Dark Descent. And whatever happens, don’t look over your shoulder.
You are Daniel. You live in London. Now you stand in a decrepit castle; you don’t know how you got there. Lightning flashes through nearby windows. Rainwater streams through a hole in the roof. Noises — breathing? voices? — drift from a black corner. Large drops of a violet-colored liquid form a trail leading toward a dark hallway.
Words echo through your mind, residual fragments of a dream from another lifetime: “Don’t forget. Some things mustn’t be forgotten. The shadow hunting me … I must hurry.” You have no choice but to follow the trail. You enter the main hallway and a sudden wind whips across your face. Everything around you seems to push in, and then pull out. Your pulse quickens. You press on.
Do You Dare?
You find tinderboxes so you can light the candles you come across. If you stand too long in the dark, you find your sanity slowly beginning to drain; that is not good. Eventually you add a lantern to your inventory. It gives you light whenever you need it, but if you burn it too long, you’ll run out of oil. You can find more, but this castle clearly isn’t well-stocked.
During your exploration, you find other useful items too, including ropes and sticks, as well as the ingredients needed to mix potions that are used in different ways. Some things must be combined with each other, or perhaps you’ll need to use an object in one place to make something happen elsewhere. There are many ways to solve Amnesia’s puzzles.
Notes and diary entries you occasionally come across fill in the back story. The first note you find is dated August 19, 1839, and it is addressed to you. It says, in part: “There is a purpose. You are my final effort to put things right.” You’re implored to find Alexander of Brennenburg in the castle’s inner sanctum and kill him.
Your task won’t be easy, though: you’re told that “a shadow is following you. It’s a living nightmare, breaking down reality. I have tried everything and there is no way to fight back. You need to escape it as long as you can.”
The note is signed: “Your former self, Daniel.”
Game Hardware
Check out our systems for your best gaming experience.
At Least There’s a Skylight. What was that sound?
That Which Must Not Be Named. Dealing with this creepy thing won’t be easy.
If you liked this game, check out:
- A Vampyre Story
- The Abbey
- Clive Barker’s Undying
- Cold War
- Max Payne
- Rhem 2
- Riddle of the Sphinx II: The Omega Stone
- True Crime: Streets of LA
- Secret of the Lost Cavern
- Penumbra: Black Plague
System Requirements:
- Mac OS X version 10.5.8 or 10.6.4
- 2GHz Intel or PowerPC processor
- 1GB of RAM
- Video card: Nvidia GeForce 6 or ATI Radeon HD
- 3GB hard disk space
Lovecraft’s Enduring Influence
In his introduction to H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath,” Ballantine Books consulting editor Lin Carter writes: “He loved cats and ice cream, and ancient Rome; the Colonial architecture of his native Providence, and Arthur Machen’s stories … He loathed modernity and mechanization, cold weather, and anything that had to do with the sea … And somehow, out of this mélange of quaint pretensions … he became the author of some of the finest and most enduring supernatural fiction that has been written in this country since the days of that other Providence gentleman, Edgar Allen Poe.”
Born in 1890 and dead at the age of 47, Howard Phillips Lovecraft was largely unknown during his lifetime, outside the world of pulp magazines where his stories appeared. However, he was a prolific letter writer, and he maintained regular correspondence with Conan the Barbarian creator Robert E. Howard, “Psycho” author Robert Bloch, and others. Some of them, notably author August Derleth, expanded on Lovecraft’s stories — with his blessing — and continued to do so after his death. Thanks to their efforts, new generations became aware of Lovecraft’s work, which continues to influence writers, filmmakers, game developers, artists, musicians, and others to this day.
Lovecraft’s short story “The Outsider” provided some of the influence for Amnesia: The Dark Descent. His brief piece “The Statement of Randolph Carter” held sway too, as a member of the Frictional Games development team notes on the company’s blog: “It is very short and a perfect example of fear of the unknown. This story really got to under my skin and has served as an important influence when coming up with good scares for our horror games.” (A link to the complete “The Statement of Randolph Carter” can be found at that blog post.)
Lovecraft’s influence is so strong that Frictional named its 3D game engine HPL. Version 2, which enables creepier graphics and spookier environments, was used to create Amnesia. An included editor lets you build your own levels and modify the game’s objects, physics, and more. You can share your efforts with other players at Frictional’s Amnesia forum. You can load new levels through the Custom Story option in the game’s main menu.
Tips and Tricks
- Use tinderboxes and lantern oil sparingly, because you won’t find plentiful amounts of either one. There are plenty of places where using a tinderbox on a candle won’t necessarily do much good, so check out the surrounding area with the lantern, if possible, to figure out if you should waste a tinderbox illuminating it.
- Hiding in the darkness is your best defense against the nameless evil wandering the castle, but remember that doing so also slowly drains your sanity. If you need some time to formulate a plan, pause the game so your sanity doesn’t worsen while you think.
- When some awful monstrosity shambles your way, you have no choice but to run. Head for the nearest room and put boxes, chairs, and anything else you can find in front of the door. Hopefully they will hold when it starts banging on the door.
- Chairs, boxes, and barrels also come in handy when you need to smash a hole in a wall or reach something on a high shelf. You can move those things around the environment to your heart’s content.