Review: Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Amnesia: the Dark Descent is a first person survival-horror and adventure game for the PC and Mac. It was developed by Frictional Games.

One of Brennenburg Castle's unsettling, flesh-covered rooms.

Daniel wakes up in Brennenburg Castle with amnesia and a note from his past self. The note says that Daniel gave himself amnesia willingly, that he has to kill the baron of Brennenburg in the center of the castle, and that an unknown supernatural menace called a shadow is trying to kill him. With no way out of the castle and clear evidence that the shadow is real, Daniel sets of kill Alexander, the baron of Brennenburg.

The player controls Daniel as he moves from room to room in Brennenburg, solving minor puzzles and avoiding monsters. Daniel has a sanity meter which depletes whenever he is in a dark area. When his sanity is lowered Daniel experiences hallucination which manifest as frightening visuals and sounds. The player can counter these effects by lighting the many candles or torches in the castle to light some areas. Tinderboxes, the item needed to light candles, are found around the castle, but are in limited supply so the player has to use them sparingly. There is also a lamp that requires oil which is also in short supply.

Running around Brennenburg Castle is a monster, which is the only thing that can actually harm Daniel. It appears at random in some rooms, and if it spots Daniel it will chase him down. Daniel has no way of defending himself, so he has to run and hide. The trick is to put enough distance between Daniel and the monster and make Daniel hid out of the monster’s line of sight, at which point it will hopefully lost interest and run away. Closing doors slows the monster down. Using the lantern also alerts the monster to Daniel’s location, but hiding in the darkness messes with Daniel’s sanity, so it’s a matter of deciding what the bigger problem is. Since the monster is actually harmful it’s the bigger problem.

Outrunning the monster is definitely the scariest part of the game, especially with the change in music and its horrible face. And it is unusual how unlike other video game protagonists Daniel can only run. But it can feel unfair how random the monster’s appearance is. You can walk into a room, the music starts up, and you run into a corner and hope the computer thinks it is dark enough, but it is not because the last time you were in there you lit all the candles. Or the damn thing will spawn in a narrow hallway and chase you, you hide, and it wanders back to where it started and blocks the path again.

The puzzles are all pretty simple. Most of them involve going to a room to find an object to put in another room, the only obstacle is the player’s fear. If an object like a lever has to be put into something else in a certain way there is usually a note lying around that explains how to do it. A few of the puzzles utilize the game’s physics engine, which gives a realistic weight to objects when they are lifted or thrown. It also makes the player have to slide the mouse up and down to pull levers, which is okay, but tougher to do when turning cranks. None of the puzzles are really ingenious or frustrating; all they do is give the narrative direction.

Amnesia is interesting because its entertainment value is focused solely on people who really like to be scared, who go out of their way to be scared. And that’s the best way to enjoy the game, that’s why the developers suggest at the beginning to play the game in a darkened room with earphones to really immerse oneself in the atmosphere. Because otherwise the player might notice that aside from the monster the only scary tricks the game has beside the monster are distorting the screen, cockroaches walking across the screen, flesh like substance that appears on the walls, and a library of sound effects.

The back-story is fleshed out through journal entries that Daniel finds written by his past-self, and flashbacks he sometimes has when walking into a room. It is interesting story, eventually finding out what the monster chasing him is and why Daniel eventually gave himself amnesia. However it is possible to miss parts of the back-story this way.

Brennenburg itself is not a really interesting place, horrifying imagery aside. There are some nice rooms, but for the most part it is hallways of stone and timber filled with junk. No decorations anywhere, which does make it less interesting to walk around then the few bedrooms Daniel goes through.

Amnesia: the Dark Descent is good for people who have fun getting scared. Other people who are looking just for adventure game might feel underwhelmed in-between feeling terrified.