Amnesia: The Dark Descent - The Art of Fear

I recently managed to pluck up enough courage to complete the horror game, 'Amnesia: The Dark Descent'. I've seen some horrible things, and gone to some dark places, but it's finally over... This post is half-review, and half looking at what makes people scared (which Amnesia does exceptionally well). There are *MINOR SPOILERS* in the article, so if you want to play Amnesia with no prior knowledge at all, just skip to the conclusion now! If you don't mind, I'll put the spoiler alert on paragraphs that give away things in the game that would better be left to experience yourself.

About Amnesia

First things first, Amnesia is a horror game developed by Frictional Games. It follows the story of protagonist, Daniel (BONUS!), after he wakes up the suspiciously empty castle of Brennenburg, muttering about his name and rolling around the floor a little. This is the only information that the game gives you at the beginning, initiating fear immediately through the sense of mystery and feelings of vulnerability.

You quickly find items called 'tinderboxes', which you can use to light most light sources in the game. Soon after you find the only equipable item in the game, the lantern, which has a finite fuel supply that can only be replaced by finding even more limited oil flasks. You are forced to actively conserve tinderboxes and oil, lest you be left in darkness, which will drain your sanity (Daniel suffers from nyctophobia and necrophobia - not great in a castle filled with both darkness and corpses). If you end up on low sanity because you've spent to long in darkness, or see too many 'unsettling events', your vision begins to go blurred, and you will eventually collapse onto the ground, crawling. Again, not fantastic when you're about to get eaten by a hungry looking monster with a jaw as wide as its arm is long.

Even better, you can do absolutely nothing about these monsters, other than hide, run or simply avoid them altogether. No guns. No swords. You can't even punch the blasted things! You are completely defenceless, leading to paranoia and a lot of hiding in corners. Don't try negotiating with them, or offering shiny trinkets that you've gathered on your journey - it just makes that angrier. Looking at the things will drain your sanity further, and will cause your vision to become distorted (see picture).

The game is comprised of 3 main elements - avoiding/running from/crying-in-corners-until-they-pass monsters, completing puzzles and exploring the castle as you descend deeper and deeper through its many levels. That should give a good overview of the game, so I'll now go to what makes it quite so scary.

Generating Fear

"I don't see what's so scary about it? It's all just on a screen so it can't hurt you."

- My sister

Oh, if only it were so simple! Yes, perhaps if you just threw caution to the wind and ran through the entire game fearlessly, it might not be so scary, but if you actually want to experience it fully you need to do what it says at the start (play in the dark, don't expect to 'win' and let yourself enter the world of Amnesia.) Instead of rambling about what makes Amnesia scary, I'll instead examine the three components (in ascending order) that I found to be the most important in generating the extreme fear that I, and most who play it, felt.

The first of these is the plot, including the scripting of certain events and monster appearances. The plot itself is very dark, as only revealed incrementally mostly through diary extracts you find lying around. There are numerous references to torture, murder and kidnapping, with the descriptions and flashbacks becoming more and more vivid as the game progresses. I found this to be particularly draining, especially the very disturbing 'torture rooms' areas in the late-game, bathed in an eery red glow and rapidly draining your sanity.

The scripting of events is very intelligently done - there are only a few 'jump-out' scary moments, and these are done with such rarity and built up so well that they are genuinely terrifying (I literally started flailing during one of them...) This is in stark contrast to games that rely almost entirely on this type of scare (Dead Space, etc.), and the novelty quickly wears thin, with them becoming predictable. The main horror drive of the game comes from careful pacing, and careful placement of monsters and events that leave you afraid to turn the corner, or take a few steps down a darkened corridor. There is, in fact, only a relatively small number of times that you will encounter monsters, and in many of these the monsters present no real threat. The strength of the game is that it keeps you guessing, and trying to predict where there will be monsters, and then surprising you when they're not around the suspicious-looking corner.

*SPOILER PARAGRAPH* One thing that I noticed to be very powerful was the revisiting of previous areas, which act as 'hubs' connecting to several areas. This is done in many games become it gives the player a sense of reassurance and achievement if they have completed an objective before revisiting, but Amnesia turns this on its head, often having the hub transformed (an example is a nice fountain which fills with blood and has a corpse lying in it), or mostly destroyed by the supernatural being known as 'The Shadow'. A similar device used is the destruction of the feeling of safety in certain areas. Fairly early on in the game, you reach what used to be your bedroom, which comprises of three small well-lit (a blessing in Amnesia!) rooms. You feel like you could just spend a few minutes recovering from stumbling through dark corridors with the sound of monsters around you, until you here groaning and something beating down the door. Although this encounter isn't particularly dangerous (you can just hide in your trusty closet until it finishes messing up your room), it certainly made me doubt the safety of even the nice areas of Amnesia, destroying the last places of refuge in the game for me.

On to the second of the components; the monsters themselves. The design of the monsters are outstanding for the purpose of scaring the player. Importantly, they are recognisable as human, but are horrifically deformed. Although I can't speak for everyone, I literally wanted to avoid looking at them, not only to conserve my sanity and to avoid them seeing me, but because they are actually scary in their own right. Not only their appearance, but their shuffling movements, their nightmare-haunting moans, and even the ominous music that accompanies them, are terrifying.

The formula for monster encounters is also clever - you look at them, they usually look at you, then you must run and hide with them hot on your heels. The adrenalin rush of some of these chases can be overwhelming, and can often warrant taking a break to calm back down (or at least they did for me, as easily scared as I am.) There are no monsters jumping out of cupboards, or similar cheap scares, and you will often see the monster before they see you, if you're fortunate.

The final, and most potent element of the game, for me, may be surprising - the sound. From the dreaded 'chase music' to the haunted cries that echo around the depths of the castle, the sounds of the game are what really make the atmosphere. What was that? It sounded like footsteps. Perhaps it's through that door. Or maybe it's above me. The sounds keeps you guessing and worrying, and the sound of wind through an opening in the ceiling can still make you jump if you're already put on edge.

Some people have suggested that you could remove the monsters to make the fear of the game more manageable (many people do struggle to play Amnesia for more than an hour before giving in), but I think that the simple removal of the background noise and music would be enough to almost neutralise the fear of the game, perhaps leaving it almost comical. I was unable to find the willpower to use headphones as suggested, but I am sure that it would have made much of the game utterly unbearable.

Notable mentions go the lighting, which is not excessive, nor is everything shrouded in darkness, to the use of the 'sanity meter' to provide additional impetus to stay in the light and avoid monsters, and also to physical design of levels. The claustrophobic, mazing passages of the prison, or the dank, water-filled chambers of the cistern, were enough to stop you in your tracks for a while, until you work out the safest path and second-guess where monsters could be.


Conclusion

Amnesia is a masterpiece of the horror genre, and perhaps even of the gaming world. It pushes almost every fear button that our species has - the dark, human-like monsters, death, torture, vulnerability, running from an unyielding enemy, the unknown and even the odd spider. What I've said here only scratches the surface of Amnesia, and you will not be left unsatisfied if you decide to play it in the way that it suggests. The pure dread that I felt as I wandered down those dark corridors clutching my lantern, almost out of oil, is unmatched by any other game I've played, film I've watched or book I've read.

Try it out for yourself! Or are you too much of a chicken? ;-)


- Daniel