Tis the season to be spooky, so you might fancy grabbing a free copy of Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs from Epic to keep you quivering until Amnesia: Rebirth launches next week. Piggy-wigs was quite different for an Amnesia follow-up, having been made by Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture developers Thechineseroom rather than series creators Frictional Games, but it does have some jolly unpleasant parts. Defs worth a poke for the price.

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In the run-up to the release of Amnesia: Rebirth, Frictional Games are continuing to show love to their first Amnesia game for its tenth anniversary. Paying tribute to the modding community that’s played no small part in Amnesia’s longevity, Frictional have now released the source code for Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs freely online.

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After a stretch of teasing and ARG puzzling, Soma developers Frictional Games today announced their next game, Amnesia: Rebirth. This autumn they’ll return to the first-person horror series that made their name with a new protagonist, a new setting, and new awfulness. Have a peek in the announcement trailer below.

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If you have not bought the Amnesia first-person spookers intentionally, inadvertently acquired them in an old bundle you don’t really remember buying, nor grabbed them when they were free in January good news: both Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs are free for keepsies right now on Steam. What’s changed since the last giveaway? I still have not finished either of them, I’ll tell you that much. You go lock yourselves into dungeons with terrible monsters, I’ll be just fine where I am, thanks. (more…)

Hey, come here a second. I want you to stare at this dank room full of eerie machinery. Really give it a good stare. Drink in the atmosphere, maybe play with some of the meatblobs, think about how small we are in the universe, and

BOO!

Liked that, did you? If you quite like a spot of spooking with cosmic horror and science gone meatwild, you might enjoy more free scares in Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine for pigs. The pair of first-person puzzle-o-horrors are free for keepsies right now, see, Steam keys and all. (more…)

The next game from the creators of Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs and Dear Esther will be a systems-driven isometric adventure, inspired by tabletop RPGs and wargames. I spoke to The Chinese Room’s studio director Dan Pinchbeck about the game, Total Dark, and he explained that he’s wanted to make a game driven by RPG-style mechanics for a long time.

As well as providing us with some of the first details about Total Dark, he discussed the continuing influence of Esther, and the ways in which ‘walking simulators’ are returning to their first-person adventure roots.

… [visit site to read more]

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture [official site], the latest from Dear Esther and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs developers The Chinese Room, is finally heading to PC. I spoke to studio head Dan Pinchbeck earlier this week and he told me that the completed PC port has now been delivered to Sony, who will be acting as publishers. Sony’s role means they’ll be responsible for selecting a release date and marketing the game, as they did with Helldivers when it came to PC late last year.

But it’s coming. The rapture is coming.

… [visit site to read more]

Something I can’t do have never been able to do in terms of what I do for a living is enjoy horror games.

That’s why I’ve decided to talk the matter over with Adam, one of the RPS resident horror fans and the chap whose own most recent supporter post dealt with Five Nights At Freddy’s; a nasty, brutish horror game but one not without merit or skill.

… [visit site to read more]

It was not so long ago that our own Adam “Murder Maestro” Smith lamented the lack of imagination in horror stories. Implausibly trap-laden asylums, spoooooky forests, and hastily cobbled-together castles dominate, while more interesting locales and subject matters are few and far-between. While I wouldn’t go so far as to say that horror’s stuck in a full-blown rut, it could certainly end up there if it keeps wandering down the same predictable trail. I’ve been thinking about it, though (largely while replaying Amnesia: The Dark Descent as Halloween nightmare fuel), and I’ve come to realize that there are some amazing avenues ahead for stomach-lurching scares in gaming. Problem is, there are a few major, perhaps even primeval forces that could slip a dangling noose around possibility’s all-too-exposed neck.>

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As you didn’t notice, I’ve been away for the last three months, to focus on helping raise the child which will one day destroy the universe. In between prising the crushed, partially-chewed remains of smaller star systems from her tiny, iron grip, I managed to play a few videogames. Some for a while, but most only for a couple of hours. Despite myself, it was difficult not to have opinions about them, and to want to write those opinions on some manner of ‘web’ ‘site.’ I bided my time. I waited. And now here I am, able to force you to listen to my single-sentence opinions on 13 recent videogames – the likes of Saints Row IV, Gone Home, The Bureau, Papers Please and even that car-stealing thing on console. For the first time on RPS, I have even included a rating for each game. > (more…)