Amnesia: The Dark Descent

http://twowho.blogspot.com/ has convinced me to write a post about:

This. This is a scary game. So scary, I've wanted to play it myself, but I've ended up watching livestreams from /v/ and prerecorded ones on youtube as well as having one of my friends play it for me. (I'm too chicken.) So, I've probably seen the first half of this game a good ~4 times. I've been scared every single time, although I do know when the monster comes out now and what to do, so I suppose it wouldn't be too hard to play it on my own. I've stayed up until almost 3AM on a school night because I was too afraid to sleep and whenever I entered a new room in my house I checked the closets to make sure the monster wasn't in there before i closed the door. Ridiculously unnecessary when you think about it, I know. This is just the greatest survival horror game I've ever seen.

So in this game you play as a character named Daniel, and you pretty wake up in a abandoned mansion. Apparently you erased your memories, and the only thing you're going off of is a letter to yourself when you wake up, saying to kill and take revenge on Alexander for some unexplained reason. I haven't finished the game yet, but the whole finding letters throughout the game from yourself is somewhat fishy. Although I haven't finished, there's a possibility that someone else wrote these letters going through the back of my mind.

As I said earlier, this is a survival horror game! and throughout the game you solve puzzles, and the only thing you can do when you encounter monsters is run away or hide. No killing things in this game! The game its self takes place in a very dark mansion, and throughout the game you find matches for candles and oil for a hand lamp you carry. You have to use these items wisely though, because of the limited amount in the game. These play into your survival meter or your "sanity" as Daniel. When you stay in the dark for long amounts of time, the more likely a monster is going to appear. The light helps bring down your sanity, BUT there are unavoidable monsters, even with full sanity it's possible to run into them. But, monsters can spawn due to you becoming insane. Running into monsters leads to a game over, but the game auto saves very often and when you'll just start again somewhere close to where you were.

Now that i've gone over mechanics of the game, I'll go over my personal experiences. I do love being scared. I don't know if this makes makes me a masochist or not, but anyway. I got one of my friends to livestream the game for me. Doubtful that this game would make him scared, he agreed. It was probably one of the ridiculous things I've seen in my life. He had no internal compass, and he did the dumbest shit, that led to new discoveries. I had only seen one stream of the game before I watched him play, so I had a pretty good idea of what to do.

Things learned:
1. You can't carry objects from one room to the other.
I'm sorry, you can't carry that broom to the other room and pretend to be Marisa while running away from monsters anymore.

2. Air Jordan's don't get you out of rooms.
Me and my other friends trolled the hell out of my friend who was actually playing telling him that the only way to get out of the room was to stack all the barrels in the room and crawl through a hole in the ceiling. He tried for a good 30 MINUTES trying to stack the barrels correctly and jump on them. He couldn't jump high enough, which resulted in us telling him to put is air jordans on. When he got to the top, he couldn't find a hole. He realized all he had to do to get out of the room was move some rocks and a pillar against the door. BOY WAS HE MAD.

3. Closing the closet door at the last second after a monster sees you actually let's you get away!
Well, when you first go into the guest room anyway. But on another occasion in the prison, a monster was chasing my friend and he just shut the door and the monster opened the door. At this point we were like "OH SHIT, YOU'RE DEAD MAN, YOU'RE SO DEAD." The monster just opened the door and walked away kind of in a smug HATERS GONNA HATE fashion.

4. The water monster knows where you are. HE IS OMNIPOTENT.
Water monster apparently scared the shit out of my friend. He SCREAMED. To this day, he claims it was for "Dramatic effect".

AND FINALLY THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL:

5. Barrels are OVERPOWERED AS FUCK.
Sorry for the profanity, but I wanted to get my point across. So, my friend panicked the first time he knew a monster was coming for him. We learned earlier, that avoiding looking at them is the best action if you want to get out alive. He was stuck in the kitchen during the prison section, and so he picked up a barrel and held it in front of him. "IF I CAN'T SEE THE MONSTER, HE CAN'T SEE ME."

>Monster comes in
>Stares at barrel
>Walks out

JUST A FLOATING BARREL GUYS, NOTHING TO SEE HERE. Laughter ensued. Because it was just stupid enough that it worked. Unfortunately, he wasn't as lucky the second time and the monster decided NOPE. and ripped his barrel to shreds killing him afterward. It was great while it lasted. On another occasion, my friend actually used it to get across a monster who wouldn't move. His sanity meter was full, so he tried it. The monster just kind of ignored him while he walked past him with the barrel across his face, never making eye contact with him. I'm not sure if this has worked with anyone else, but if you do own the game, it might be something you want to try. Because it's hilarious when it works.

No, but seriously. It's a great game and i encourage you to all buy it, as it's not some big shot company creating it. Just some sweeds making an indie game. (also the creators of penumbra. the games are very similar in the way they work.)

To end the longest blog in all of blog of blog land, i'll post a video of how the game sound effects were made and actual game play. I can't thank you enough if you even read a small portion of this! You're great.

In the making of sound effects:


Gameplay!:
(scary part at 7:00!)