The year is 1937, and you’ve just woken up in a crashed plane in the middle of a desert. You’re not some sort of Indiana Jones-esque film though, I’m afraid, you’re in a horror game – Amnesia: Rebirth, to be exact. It’s the new survival horror from Frictional Games, the team behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Soma, and it’s out today.

How can the horror of a traditionally dark and dingy series hold up under the bright desert sun? I talked with game director Thomas Grip and creative lead Fredrik Olsson to find out. We also discussed monsters and things they’ve learned from their old games, as well as how player choice can make horror that much more horrifying.

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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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In all of horror, the true terror often lies in threats of things that might have been more than what really is. A jump scare that’s just a gust of wind or a monster that’s actually a hallucination, you know the kind. Here’s a truly frightening prospect then: a version of Amnesia: The Dark Descent with some very different details. Frictional Games celebrated the game’s 10th anniversary by sharing some lesser-known ideas for the game as it might have been. Some of them are a real trip.

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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’ve not heard, those folks who done underwater horror game Soma and haunted house horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent are working on another thing that is almost certainly a horror game. And look, it’s a scary desert game this time around. Probably. We don’t know for sure yet because so far they’ve led players on an ARG that’s alternate reality game looking for clues about what their next proper video game might be. Today them super sleuths have uncovered another hidden video and this one looks like an actual game (teaser) trailer.

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The folks over at Frictional Games seem to have something new in the works. The studio has largely been quiet since releasing SOMA back in 2015 aside from adding a monster-free Safe Mode to the spooky underwater game. Frictional overhauled their old website just before taking a holiday break and in the update have added a new entry to the “games” tab simply called “Next Frictional Game.”

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I return to Amnesia: The Dark Descent with one question alone: will it still scare me?

Amnesia scared the bejesus out of me in 2010 when it first came out. But we all know how games age, and the magic can wear off. At the time the graphics and physics on offer were really astonishing work for a tiny indie team, but what about almost a decade later? Can it still make me do that bum-clenched mad panic thing where I lean in forward in my chair in an effort to get away from the monsters faster? Or will it seem a little quaint now?

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Nobody has to die, Justine told me. There’s a way to save them all.

Reader, I did not save them all.

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With the season of spooky celebrations kicking off, Amnesia: The Dark Descent has added a Hard Mode for people who wish to suffer terrible cruelty as they explore the horrible ghost house of meat monsters. The new mode, added to 2010’s first-person spooker in a patch today, makes the meatmen more murderous and starves us of comforting light so we lose our mind (and then die as we lose our loose grip on reality). So a real good time. It’s a stark contrast to the bonus mode developers Frictional Games added to their later Soma – an easy option for explorers and sightseers. This time, they want you dead.

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I was jolly pleased when Frictional Games patched a ‘Safe Mode’ into Soma, letting fraidypants like me freely explore the undersea horror. Conversely, I said “Ha ha ha NOPE” aloud after Frictional announced today that they will next add a new difficulty level to Amnesia: The Dark Descent – a ‘Hard Mode’ to freak your nut out and murder you hard. No thank you! But I know some Amnesia players had wanted their minds more fragile and its ghoulies deadlier, so good for them? Agh.

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