Amnesia: The Dark Descent Message Board older than one year ago

Where were you all last week? I turned up and no one was here, honest! What’s that? No, I’m not crossing my fingers behind my back, and you definitely didn’t see him heading off on holiday. What nonsense. Anyway, to make up for it, here’s an extra-long edition of Mod News to cover the past two weeks. This time: Crash Bandicoot, a Warcraft III art mod, a surprising number of trailers and a bizarre remake of Deus Ex…(more…)

To celebrate the launch of Amnesia: The Dark Descent on OnLive today, the cloud-gaming service is offering a scary good deal until midnight ET tonight: Simply enter "THANKYOU" (all one word) in the "Redeem Promo Code" field in the checkout window and you'll be granted a full PlayPass for the game at no charge. In other words: Free game!

The catch? Actually playing Amensia could end up costing you your sanity.

[Thanks, Barney]

The super creepy 'Justine' expansion is now available on all versions of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Originally released as part of Valve's Potato Sack promotion -- and thus only available via Steam -- 'Justine' takes players through several chambers designed to test their mental fortitude. The catch is that failing a test results in someone's grisly death.

The expansion is available via update 1.2, which can be downloaded via the update page on the Frictional Games website. As an added bonus, the update also includes a collection of five short stories written by Amnesia's main writer and illustrated by its concept artist.

Finally, Frictional has released the soundtrack to Amnesia. Those who pre-ordered or purchased Amnesia directly from Frictional can download the soundtrack for free. For everyone else, it's available for purchase from the Frictional store. We're not sure why you would want to listen to Amnesia's psyche-rending soundtrack outside of the game -- perhaps some people just like being on edge all the time.

Super-spookfest Amnesia was one of our favourite games last year. Ridiculously scary, and mightily well crafted, the first person adventure had us shivering in our swivel chairs. And shitting in our trousers. (I think I’d gone a bit too mainstream in that previous sentence – rescued at the end.) So flipping hooray – they’re re-releasing their Potato Sack DLC, Justine, as a free addition to the game. Along with other other goodies. And it gets even free-er today. If you head to the OnLive forum you can get a code that will allow you to play the full game for no pennies.

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#watchthis Ordinarily, you toss a video like this on YouTube, and every comment shouts it down as fake. But anyone who's played indie horror hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent knows this guy's skin-crawling, pupil-dilating, sphincter-clenching, headphone-grabbing reactions are on the level. More »

Aperture Science presents a new expansion for The Dark Descent, available now on Steam!

What are you doing right now? Working? Smiling? Breathing? Well, stop with that nonsense and go straight over to the Steam page for The Potato Sack, a new bundle of indie games offering £108′s worth of great indie games, including Amnesia, Super Meat Boy, Toki Tori (which you can read Kieron shouting about here), The Ball (which Jim and John talk about here) and Defense Grid: The Awakening, for a paltry £27. I’d eagerly pay £30 for those five games alone, and there are another eight in the pack.

While if you already own two or three of these games you might have a tricky decision ahead of you, if you don’t own a single one of them then this is an absolute no-brainer. Buy! Buy it now! There’s even a Team Fortress 2 hat in it for you. And just in case only one or two of the participating games catch your eye, each of them is currently enjoying a 50% off sale. Amazing.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a frightening game. A pants-wettingly frightening game. One of the few nice things about Frictional Games' heretofore downloadable title is that you can at least pretend that it ceases to exist once the computer is turned off. Apparently not satisfied by this state of affairs, THQ's ValuSoft division will be bringing a box-copy version of the game to retail on February 22 for the decidedly not scary price of $20.

The box itself isn't very frightening at all, almost to the point of being amusing. We can only assume this is to lull new players into a false sense of security before installing the game.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a frightening game. A pants-wettingly frightening game. One of the few nice things about Frictional Games' heretofore downloadable title is that you can at least pretend that it ceases to exist once the computer is turned off. Apparently not satisfied by this state of affairs, THQ's ValuSoft division will be bringing a box-copy version of the game to retail on February 22 for the decidedly not scary price of $20.

The box itself isn't very frightening at all, almost to the point of being amusing. We can only assume this is to lull new players into a false sense of security before installing the game.

Cult hit survival-horror title finds a home.

Developer is now "completely financially stable."

Once on the verge of its own dark descent, independent studio Frictional Games reports that relatively strong sales of Amnesia: The Dark Descent have made the company "completely financially stable" for the first time in its four-year history. Frictional now has enough capital to finish its next game "without any problems," thanks to Amnesia closing in on 200,000 copies sold and trouncing pre-release "dream estimates" of 100K units.

The company's newfound stability represents a complete one-eighty from its situation just four months ago, when Amnesia was released to tepid first-week sales. "Even though we are far from complaining," Frictional wrote at the time, "it feels like we do not have the financial security we would like to have, to truly be able to focus on making the best game possible." Funny how a strong Metacritc score, a series of Steam sales and compelling fan PR (like the popular YouTube clip posted after the break) can turn it all around.

"We have been extremely lucky with our media coverage and gotten tons of free PR," Frictional admits, "something that has greatly influenced our sales compared to other titles." While the studio doesn't want to discourage hopeful indie developers, it does consider Amnesia's sales to be atypical in the current digital distribution market on PC. "The market does continue to grow though, and it might not be long before these kinds of numbers are considered perfectly normal."

Of course, Frictional is quick to point out that self-publishing can be the key to success in the digital marketplace, suggesting that "we would not be in the state that we are in now" if Amnesia had been launched through a third-party publisher. "This does not mean that publishers are evil," Frictional adds, "just that one should think carefully before signing up for anything. Releasing a game without any financial backing or help with marketing is quite a struggle, but if you pull it off it is well worth the effort!"'

Having pulled it off, Frictional is now reconsidering a console release of Amnesia, with the "current idea" to contract a third-party developer to do the port. Meanwhile, with no plans to expand its staff, the studio is forging ahead with its new game. "We aim to use the emotions that Amnesia was able to provoke and to focus them in a different direction, which will hopefully give delightfully disturbing results."

The Dark Descent developer talks puzzles and future plans.

As children, our parents tell us not to be afraid of the dark. They say this not to provide us with a valuable life lesson, but to keep us quiet, so that they can sleep. What our parents neglect to say is that fear of the dark is, in fact, perfectly reasonable, because there are things in the dark. Things that want to kill and eat us. Granted, you won't find many such creatures in suburbia but, from a purely evolutionary standpoint, a healthy fear of the dark has helped humanity survive.

Most of us have forgotten what it's like to tremble in the dark, praying for the obscene, hungry beast to go away before your mind breaks. Amnesia: The Dark Descent is our reminder.

Exploration and scares in Frictional's new survival horror game.

The scariest game of the summer?

Survive amongst the horrors that lurk in the dark in Amnesia on PC.

Over five minutes of level-editing gameplay with the included level editor for Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

Oh, perfect use for my spare tinderbox!