I played a bit of Amnesia The Dark Descent yesterday.
It's pretty scary, the game does warn you to just play and not worry too much about dying. I played for an hour or 2 and only saw one enemy.
Yet I was still scared up to and after that point.
I had a think about the threat of death in a game and I don't get scared when Mario falls off a ledge but I do get scared in something like this or Resident Evil.
But I don't think I'm scared of the death itself, in something like Resident Evil I'm scared of the lost progress. I'm scared of running out of resources, especially type writer tape, I'm scared of saving myself into a corner without enough ammo or items to get me out of it.
I haven't experienced death in Amnesia yet but the warning text implies that you won't lose much or any progress.
It's still a creepy and atmospheric game. I wonder if the fear comes a bit from the loosely explained sanity mechanic. You can't go in the dark for too long or weird stuff starts happening to the screen. I've never seen that out until its fullest extent so I don't even know what I'm scared of in that regard, perhaps just the unknown.
To eliminate fear in this game, maybe one must die and go insane so you can realise it's just a game and it's not the end of the world. But maybe it's best not to so the game continues with its intended effect.
Technically the game is a bit of a headache. Low frame rate at times, murky graphics, I'm sure both are a product of its time and also an intentional restriction that adds to the atmosphere and foreboding dread. Dialogue audio is noticeably roughly recorded or more likely encoded/processed at a poorer quality. I'm not really sure why this is unless the original release had some arbitrary file size limit imposed on it by XBLA or PSN that was never rectified for this compilation release. Maybe it's intentional, who knows.
@ralphdibny I personally would not fit the stress to the lost progress or been stuck without items as that to some point can happen also in a platformer when you loose all your lives. Horror games put in stress environments with lighting (or lack of it), unsettling sounds and the worry that you will be jump scared at every step (even if rarely or never happens)
@Balta666 yeah I think it's a combination of both for me tbh! I've definitely had non scary games that I've found scary (like dread to take the next step scary) because of restrictive game mechanics. Likewise I've had easy games be scary because of the atmosphere and horror tropes one would normally associate with horror films. Immersion by playing definitely makes those things scarier than they would be in a film!
Horror games put in stress environments with lighting (or lack of it), unsettling sounds and the worry that you will be jump scared at every step (even if rarely or never happens)
I think Amnesia definitely falls into this category.
I've had a few deaths in it now and while it's a concern in some respects, the things you've described are definitely the things that make it scary rather than the deaths/limited resources/inability to defend yourself.
I have checked out a guide for the usual reasons, not to actually be guided but to see what my progress in the game is by cross referencing the contents page. (I know this probably has an effect on the fear factor because knowing where you are in a journey is oftentimes less scary than not knowing!)
The Dark Descent is roughly 8 and a half hours in of itself apparently. The guide splits the game into 4 "Acts" (I'm in the second act) which so far have kind of have been hub areas that kind of off shoot into other explorable areas.
The game doesn't use the terminology of "acts", "chapters" or "parts" or anything. It was sort of obvious when I entered what the guide considered "Act 2" but I did have to reference the contents page to confirm. It was obvious from the kind of crescendo and climax of Act 1 and a kind of different colour scheme in the hub area of Act 2? I'm not sure how it will fare moving forward anyway.
It seems like each Act is roughly a bit over 2 hours each so might be good for people to know so they can pace their playthroughs!
@oliverp if you would like I can added you to the tag list so you can be aware of the games we are playing and be able to vote each month. In general we are talking about 2/3 posts a month of house cleaning. It is up to you and you can just comment whenever you want regardless of you're tagged or not. Cheers.
In all seriousness though, I'd probably play this if I had to choose. I might want to save Resi for a playthrough with all my attention as opposed to having it vye for my time against Starfield
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