Amnesia demo

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PyroTeknik

Contributor
Veteran XV
Onoes.

Amnesia demo is out.
The game comes out in a few days anyways.
It's a horror adventure game. If you've played Penumbra or heard of it, this basically takes out all the crappy bits (well, or so we hope - at least there's no combat at all this time) and leaves only the horrible scary goodness. Penumbra had some rather freaky bits, and this is looking much better (or worse depending on how much you like being scared). If you don't know Penumbra, then you fail at life. It's a game that goes like this: Look for items in the dark. Instead of items find freaky thing. Run like hell. Stumble into other freaky thing, and incidentally, items as well. Repeat until there are no more items or freaky things, or your sanity has completely eroded. Another similar game would be Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.

Graphics aren't all that, but the sound is brilliant and the lighting gets the job done - these guys know how to freak you out without going for the BOO startles. The physics are probably the best part. It kinda makes you wonder why more games don't use them like that.

Teaser that is very very dark. Srsly.


And here's the demo links
Amnesia: The Dark Descent

The demo is pretty linear, but it shows off the mechanics and a couple of tense bits.
The insanity is a neat feature. Once you have heard the crunchy sound, it can never be unheard.
 
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So, are you in control of your character the entire time? Like in the video, he opens the door and the monster starts to come out. Was the person playing just playing along by running away to the other room and then slowly peeking out behind that door or does the game take over at certain points like that to make it more cinematic?
 
You don't really lose control unless it's some plot point (where you generally just black out or have weird flashbacks) or you go insane (which has a lot of neat effects, a lot of swaying and a lot of slumping over), and even then the game just mostly messes with you. You do lose sanity by staring at monsters though, and it causes your character to hyperventilate and your controls to go all panicky fast.

The peeking and stuff is done with the physics engine. It's pretty clever, and in panic moments makes you fumble like a retard. Basically to open doors and drawers you click and pull in the direction you want it to go. You can examine and manipulate other stuff this way. It's sort of shown in the video: whenever you see some little hand icon, it means you can interact with something. In the closet bit, you just click, hold and push on the mouse to open a bit.

It actually feels quite natural after a while.

The video doesn't really show how awesome the sound is.
The crunchy noise is not present in there, but it is in the demo.
Oh crunchy noise.
 
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What exactly is the goal? To find some combo of items that let you defeat freaky things? To make it out of an area alive? What?
 
In the case of Amnesia, it's probably along the lines of figuring out why you're locked into a freaky castle, why you can't remember a damn thing, why the shadows drive you insane and what the hell is making those freaky noises. Also, what the crap is that gooey stuff.

There's a bunch of notes at the beginning of the demo that explain what you're sort of trying to do. It turns out it's pretty vague seeing as you have amnesia (srsly) and you have no idea what most of it refers to.
Of course then you encounter freaky things and require items to escape the freaky things. I suppose eventually you have gotten past enough freaky things to do whatever it is you're trying to do, which will probably be pretty freaky. Either that or you go horribly insane. Maybe both.

It's a short demo. Try it. Experience the beautiful crunchy sound. Sweet sweet crunchy sound.
 
In Amnesia there is no combat.
Things will just eat your face off, so you run like hell, block doors with whatever you can find and lock yourself in closets like a sissy girl.
I'm guessing there'll be some parts where we get to murderize some monsters using the environment, but you have no weapons at all.


The first Penumbra game had combat and it blew chunks, so they removed it for the second game and it worked much better (besides, you played a sissy english professor in that).
This new game is continuing the proud tradition of making your character freak out when bad things happen which leads to screen distortion, weird sound effects and other more amusing things.
 
phantasmagoria1.jpg
 
This game is pretty damn creepy. I'm only a short bit in, but the sounds really get to you.

Not having a weapon is really the best part about this game. It's what makes things scary. Gives it more of an adventure feel than an FPS feel, too. The first Penumbra was a bit spoiled for me because I wasn't afraid of some of the enemies when I knew how to kill them.

So now I'm creeping along, peeking around corners to make sure there's nothing in the next room ready to chase after me.
 
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