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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The inspiration for Alien: Isolation came from a simple thought experiment: what if somebody let a lion loose in developer Creative Assembly s office? I d get behind my desk and make sure it wouldn t see me, says the game s creative director Alistair Hope. Then, you d need to get to the fire escape. Maybe I d move desk to desk and distract it. If you are confronted by it, what do you do? What do you know about it? What do you know about what it knows about you? That felt pretty cool, and it wasn t relying on scripted events.

Most of us know the feelings of dread that accompany playing a horror game. But how do developers create those feelings from scratch? What are the tricks that developers use to scare us, and create a sense of atmosphere? How do they go from imagining a lion in a studio, or an empty bathroom, to moments that will scare the pants off us? I spoke to four of the top minds in the industry to find out. (more…)

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…)

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives and PC miscellany. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time.>

I have a limited patience for scary games. I enjoy a surprise jump-scare here and there, but I struggle to enjoy an incessant barrage of them making every step an anxiety-inducing moment. And yet, wow, I love Amnesia. … [visit site to read more]

Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives. One a day, every day of the year, perhaps for all time.>

Before they struck (presumably cursed) gold with Amnesia: The Dark Descent , Frictional Games released a trilogy of shorter first-person horror games under the title Penumbra [official site]. The first of these, Overture, was a bit wonky, and the third, Requiem, completely lost the plot. But the middle entry, Black Plague, is as good as anything the Swedish horror maestros have released since. … [visit site to read more]

These are my personal Edwin Droods. Stories that I’ve failed to finish, for one reason or another, and that are left suspended. In the manner of somebody reversing out of a relationship like a heavy goods vehicle, trundling slowly and beeping nonchalantly, I’d like to say to the games included: It’s not you, it’s me. >

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While Frictional are exploring the depths of consciousness in their latest creep-fest Soma, other developers are continuing the story they began in Penumbra [official site] all those years ago. A team going by the name CounterCurrent Games released an unofficial total conversion going by the name Necrologue last Halloween and this year they finished the story with the fantastically-named Twilight of the Archaic [official site]. Just look at that title for a few seconds. It’s magnificent. The games are built on Amnesia: The Dark Descent so you’ll need that to play, and can then download both Necrologue and Teatime of the Archaic from ModDB or through Steam.

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Five years ago, Frictional released Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a horror game that made us afraid of the water. That was five years ago. Now, with SOMA [official site], the studio have switched from gothic castles to science fiction and they’re taking us right to the bottom of the ocean. I’ve faced my fears and here’s wot I think.

… [visit site to read more]