These horrors that are experienced by the protagonist haunt their minds, being a representation of their hopelessness, confusion, guilt and wrath. Everything that you think is real is later revealed as a lie, but at least from the protagonist’s POV, the threat is very much alive and real in their eyes. One studio even spent two years on a total conversion mod that continued the story of Frictional’s earlier game, Penumbra: this was called Penumbra: Necrologue.What is the Monster in The Bunker? – Gamer Journalist’s Theoriesįrictional Games love messing with your head as you play their Horror Games. Some Custom Stories like White Night and Dark Room became almost as beloved as Amnesia itself. The scene exploded, and Custom Stories provided a way for players to keep playing Amnesia long after the appeal of the main game had faded. Some people chose to make full expansions on Amnesia‘s canon story, some built their own games from scratch, while others shamelessly and gleefully made jump-scare packed YouTube bait for their favourite gaming personalities. Some people chose to create horrifying scenes while still keeping in the spirit of the original game. Through this system, a lot of incredible content was made. With this, players could make ‘Custom Stories’ that could be anything from a short additional scene for the game using all Amnesia‘s assets to a total conversion game with all custom assets. Welcome to the world of Amnesia Custom Stories and the HPL2 engine.įrictional Games opened up the engine they developed for Amnesia to their fans, and with it published an in-depth guide to developing in the HPL2 engine on their wiki. See, Amnesia is more than just a well-designed horror game: it’s a whole game engine, one that encourages users to play, mod and even create entire new games. I have to admit, I’ve probably watched this one compilation a couple hundred times myself: Video compilations of Amnesia reactions regularly achieved millions of views, whether they were supercuts of the likes of PewDiePie and Markiplier, or just a random selection of the thousands of people who have terrified themselves in the name of public entertainment. Markiplier still refers to Amnesia as “the game that started it all” in regards to his YouTube career.īack in 20, more people would have watched YouTubers like PewDiePie play Amnesia than would have played it – though Frictional wasn’t entirely losing out in this equation, as it was part of what helped rocket their game into infamy. Before Amnesia though? No one would have had any idea who he was.Īmnesia was one of the games that catapulted PewDiePie into popularity, along with various other YouTubers who quickly found that being terrified on screen was the perfect formula for skyrocketing views and subscriptions. Hey, have you heard of that PewDiePie guy? Even if you don’t follow (or like) his work, the answer is probably ‘yes’. While I’m not a great fan of mental health-related terminology being used for horror, the way sanity worked in Amnesia was nothing less than brilliant. It wasn’t the first game to do this, but it was the first to bring that style of gameplay into the limelight through a combination of luck and good game design.įor me, Amnesia‘s biggest game-changer was its sanity meter. Even psychological horror masterpiece Silent Hill still used combat as a major part of its game design.Īmnesia wrenched weapons from its players hands, taking away even the minute amount of safety they might have offered. It wasn’t the first game to do a creeping, tense horror that took your weapons from you – even Amnesia developers Frictional Games had released a similar game before with Penumbra.īut by and large the big hitters of the genres were games like Resident Evil, F.E.A.R and Dead Space, which were more about shooting the scary bad guys than hiding from them. On is release in 2010, Amnesia really changed the idea of what horror could be. And then those elements that were so typically Amnesia started turning up in other games. Amnesia‘s tense game of hide and seek provided a thrill of adrenaline like no other I had experienced before, and I was hooked.īut no other game really came close, at least not at that point, so I replayed Amnesia until even the most terrifying moments were so familiar they couldn’t shock me anymore. I’m petrified at the thought of it, but I don’t want to seem like a wimp so I go along with it.Ģ4 hours later we emerge: shaking, triumphant, changed for good. A friend asks if I want to play Amnesia with her.
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