I need a hug and some hot cocoa.
Amnesia is a 2010 first-person survival horror game where you wake up with the titular mental disorder in an eerie castle and must uncover the secrets that lie within. It's also one of the most viscerally scary games I've ever played.
After the first few hours of playing, I would find myself staring down into the darkness of my empty house and refusing to venture into it. After not very long at all, I would have to run around and turn all the lights in the house on so that no shadowy corner might conceal anything. I never quite lost sleep, but I did have to make an active, concerted effort to keep the game out of my mind.
I think this game has helped me understand something about people who like horror movies. Most horror movies are not especially great films, not finely-crafted works of art. What was the last horror film that won an Oscar? And yet, these movies have huge fanbases, committed audiences, and rake in the money like nobody's business. There's a certain simplicity to being able to say: This movie is supposed to scare you. If it scared you, it's a good movie. Period. In a similar vein, it's evident that Amnesia is a scare-making machine, a factory of disturbing experiences and chilling moments. In that way, it utterly and completely succeeds.
That doesn't make it a perfect game, though, and we need to move into the actual meat of the gameplay. Most of this boils down to searching rooms for glowing items, completing some basic physics puzzles, backtracking to that obnoxiously locked door, and moving into the next area. Rinse and repeat. There's a certain lack of difficulty in the mechanics that I think is intentional. If you're running back and forth between the same two rooms because you didn't quite catch the glowing object in the corner, you're not scared. If you're Alt-Tabbing out to a walkthrough, you're not scared. If you're extremely annoyed at the esoteric puzzle, you're not scared. There's a creeping, tentative progress in the game that plays the tension just right.
The other major component of the gameplay has to do with light and darkness. You have a limited supply of oil to fuel your lantern, and you also have tinderboxes you can use on candles and torches and such to permanently light a room. Light is important because the longer you remain in darkness, the more your sanity meter begins to drain. Lose a little and you start to see roaches crawling across your screen. Lose a bit more and your vision begins to blur. Eventually, you fall to your knees and are barely able to function. However, I found that there were almost always plenty of tinderboxes and oil available, and that being even moderately discerning about when to use the items meant you never had to worry about running out.
The darkness plays an even more important role once the enemies are introduced. You have no weapons, no means of defending yourself, no recourse to a comfortable shotgun or crowbar. Your main weapon is running as fast as you can, slamming doors behind you, and cowering in a corner praying for mercy. The monsters can see you readily if you are in the light, but if you remain in darkness your sanity begins to drain. Even looking at the monsters for more than a second or two will start to unravel your brain. This creates some really wonderfully terrifying moments, where you're crouched in a dark corner, the monster is coming for you, and you have no idea if this is a good enough hiding spot or if he will just rip you to shreds.
The sound design is deserving of a mention all its own. The music is appropriately creepy most of the time, but there's also little scratching noises that seem to be in the back of your head, buzzing sounds like hoards of insects, squeaking rats and phantom footsteps. The sound totally draws you into the experience, and I highly recommend playing with headphones for the best possible scare. The soundtrack also swells into a rhythmic, tense beat when an enemy is present and a horrible screeching noise lets you know he's coming for you. It's so effective that even when all you're doing is barreling down hallways and you're probably not in danger, your heart is beating fast and chills are going down your spine.
I don't want to go too much into the game's storyline, but most of it is told either through random flashes of memory you experience throughout the castle or by notes written by your pre-amnesiac self. The story is overall appropriately disturbing, the antagonists diabolical and a touch Lovecraftian, but overall I found the specifics of the story to be somewhat confusing. It's possible I needed to go back and re-read some notes, but generally the narrative is a little muddled and characters later in the game seem to appear and assure you of their relevance without a lot of context.
Ultimately, I would say this game is definitely worth playing, and it ends up on Steam sales practically every single time. Just be strong: If I can make it through this game, so can you.
Score: 4/5
Steam Store Link
Current Price: $19.99
Next game: Anomaly Warzone Earth. I believe this was a Summer Sale, my best understanding is that it's a reverse tower defense game.
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