Amnesia: The Dark Descent gives its hero a lantern and nothing to fight with. Daniel wakes in a Prussian castle in the mid-1800s with no memory of how he got there, and when something comes for him he can only run, or hide in the dark, where his mind starts to give way.
The idea was older than Amnesia, but this was the game that made it popular. It came from Frictional Games, a small Swedish studio that had already made the Penumbra series, and it cost $360,000 to make. Within two years it had sold 1.36 million copies, counting bundles, and by its developer’s account the videos people posted of themselves playing it were helping to keep it selling.
Fast facts
- Developer and publisher: Frictional Games, Sweden.
- Released: 8 September 2010, for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux at the same time, at $20.
- Setting: Brennenburg Castle, in Prussia, in the mid-1800s.
- Development: three years, at a cost of $360,000.
- Sales: 710,000 copies by September 2012, or 1.36 million including copies sold in two bundles.
- Later versions: PlayStation 4, in Amnesia: Collection (2016).
- Source code: released under the GNU GPL version 3 in 2020.
Sanity
Daniel’s sanity is measured like his health. Edge, previewing the game in September 2010, explained that it was “periodically sapped, both by unsettling scripted events and by spending too long in the dark”, and that looking at the creatures could drive him mad too. Standing in the light restores some of it, Edge explained, but only so far; to get back to normal, Daniel needs a potion.
That made light the game’s real resource. Daniel lights candles with tinder and keeps his lantern topped up with oil, and Edge found that the supply was “constrained enough to maintain a constant level of caution without making progress impossible”. It also set the player a trap: “darkness may induce madness but you may well find yourself with reason to hide in it.”
The idea of sanity as a game rule was not new. Edge compared the system to Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth, and Silicon Knights’ Eternal Darkness (2002) had a sanity meter before either.
No weapons
The monsters appear rarely, “but suitably unnerving”, in Edge’s words, “and with no means of fighting them the only option is to run or dive into shadow”. The preview’s most frightening moment was an enemy it never saw at all: “an invisible thing which splashes after you through the flooded castle vaults – enraged every time you set foot in the water.”
The castle is full of objects that Daniel can grab and move with the mouse, which made for some puzzles and some clumsy escapes: Edge complained of “opening a door into your own face when you’re trying to escape from a demonic spirit”. The same control let the player ease a door open a crack to peek through it, and later games copied the trick.
The story comes in pieces, through notes, diary entries and voiced flashbacks, with what Edge saw as homage to “Cthulhu, Dracula and Frankenstein”. Daniel left a message for himself before erasing his own memory, and Edge suspected that he “might not be as innocent as his plummy golly-goshing would at first suggest”.
Frictional did not invent the defenceless hero either. Edge later pointed out that Climax Studios’ Silent Hill: Shattered Memories, a Wii game with no combat at all, came out before the “avoidance-based gameplay” of Amnesia.
Its influence
Small studios took the lesson that horror did not need a large budget. Joonas Rikkonen, who made SCP – Containment Breach, told Edge in 2012: “[Games like Amnesia] have proved that you don’t need cutting-edge graphics or millions of dollars to make a scary game.” Reviewing Red Barrels’ Outlast in 2013, Edge said it “owes much to Amnesia: The Dark Descent”, down to having “lifted Amnesia’s door trick”. The same issue noted that Amnesia’s “legacy is only now becoming clear as the first-person horror genre becomes ever more crowded”. In 2019 Wireframe described a crop of independent horror games as “working in the first-person horror mode popularised by more recent games like Amnesia and Outlast”.
The game also became something to watch. Thomas Grip, of Frictional Games, wrote in 2012 that two years after launch it was still selling more than 10,000 copies a month at full price. He put its long life down partly to its modding community and to “the steady flood of YouTube clips” that the mods fed: “There are lots of popular Let’s Play channels that have devoted quite a bit of time with just playing various user-made custom stories.”
Later history
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (2013), a sequel made by The Chinese Room and published by Frictional, was, Edge predicted, going to “prove divisive among fans of Frictional Games’ much-lauded original”. Frictional made the next full sequel itself, Amnesia: Rebirth (2020), which Wireframe scored at 87%. Amnesia: Collection brought the games to the PlayStation 4 in November 2016.
On the game’s tenth anniversary, in September 2020, Frictional published the source code of The Dark Descent and A Machine for Pigs on GitHub under the GNU General Public Licence version 3. The game’s art, sound and other content were not included, so players still need to own a copy to play it.
Sources
- Edge issue 218, September 2010, p. 55: preview (PC; Frictional Games; Sweden; September release; the Penumbra series; Daniel, Brennenburg and Prussia; sanity, darkness and light; tinder, oil and potions; the monsters; the flooded vaults; physics and doors; the story and its sources; Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth).
- Edge issue 245, October 2012, p. 15: Joonas Rikkonen on Amnesia.
- Edge issue 259, November 2013, p. 84 (Amnesia’s legacy), pp. 96–97 (Outlast review: “owes much to Amnesia”; the door trick) and p. 102 (Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs review: The Chinese Room, published by Frictional Games).
- Edge issue 263, February 2014, p. 120: Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (Climax Studios, Wii), its lack of combat, and its release before Amnesia.
- Edge issue 114, September 2002: Eternal Darkness and its sanity meter (see Horror games).
- Wireframe issue 25, October 2019, p. 20: “the first-person horror mode popularised by more recent games like Amnesia and Outlast”.
- Wireframe issue 35, March 2020, p. 17: Amnesia: Rebirth announced as “a full sequel”. Issue 46, December 2020, p. 102: review; issue 50, April 2021, p. 102: score of 87%.
- Thomas Grip, “Amnesia – Two Years Later”, Game Developer (originally Gamasutra), 12 September 2012 (web, secondary): 710,000 and 1.36 million copies; the bundles; three years and $360,000; more than 10,000 copies a month; the modding community, YouTube clips and Let’s Play channels. https://www.gamedeveloper.com/production/amnesia---two-years-later
- “Amnesia: The Dark Descent released”, MacTech, 8 September 2010 (web, secondary): the date, the three platforms, $20. https://www.mactech.com/2010/09/08/amnesia-the-dark-descent-released/
- “Amnesia: Collection Out Today on PS4”, DualShockers, 22 November 2016 (web, secondary). https://www.dualshockers.com/amnesia-collection-out-ps4-launch-trailer-released/
- Frictional Games, AmnesiaTheDarkDescent repository on GitHub (web): “All code is under the GPL Version 3 license.” https://github.com/FrictionalGames/AmnesiaTheDarkDescent
- “Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs go open source”, GamingOnLinux, 23 September 2020 (web, secondary): the tenth anniversary; assets not included. https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2020/09/amnesia-the-dark-descent-and-amnesia-a-machine-for-pigs-go-open-source