Amnesia Studio Reaps the Rewards of Making a Good Game

[FieryTrainwreck]

I bought Amnesia entirely on principle. It's not my sort of game at all, and I doubt I'll ever play it for more than 1-2 hours, but I wanted to support something new and different. Here's hoping we see more original efforts along the same lines - only for genres I actually want to play.

 

[Rad Party God]

Well, my PC isn't state of the art, but it ran the game pretty good, at ~30 fps in 1440x900 with all graphics at their highest.

I got past the first stages of the game, until certain point with involves jumping from place to place in a flooded basement, that place scares the shit out of me and I haven't played ever since.

I gotta admit that the first time I played it, I pirated it, until this recent Steam sale, I got it for $9 and I'm glad I did, even if I'm still scared to go on. (you can check my steam library if you don't belive me)

Can't wait to see what Frictional Games are up to now.

Just for the record, I'm planning on finishing this game... sometime... I played and finished lots and lots of survival horror games, like Resident Evil from 0 (zero) to 5, I remember back in the PS1 era, I had a demo disc showing Resident Evil 2, I bought it and I never played past the police station. Fast forward a couple of months or years later and I finished the thing like 5 times. Same with Silent Hill, too scared at first, then some time later, finished it like 4 or 5 times. Someday I'll certainly find the courage to keep playing, but right now, I'm scared shitless.

 

[Rabid Toilet]

I don't play horror games... ever (they scare the crap out of me), and I still bought Amnesia for the full price after seeing how awesome the demo was.

I'm not even able to finish the game (cause it scares the crap out of me), but I did manage to get about three hours in before I had to shut the game off. I doubt I'll be able to work up the courage to make it any farther, and I haven't even encountered any monsters yet!

I still think the game was worth every penny.

 

[Gildan Bladeborn]

Heh, Amnesia is currently sitting in my pile of new acquisitions, taunting me - I have no idea when I'd actually get around to playing it in the first place as I generally have 4 or 5 different games that I'm ostensibly "playing" (though I have been known to buckle down and finish or "become so completely obsessed with that I think about little else" certain titles from time to time), but everything I know about this game suggests I will find it terrifying. I genuinely do not know why I bought it, or any of the other "scary games" I have in my collection; I have a habit of never finishing or barely scratching the surface of games with a strong horror theme/vibe, so one would think I'd learn my lesson and stick to content that doesn't creep me out so much I stop playing it for years (in Clive Barker's Undying's case, technical issues with the games's DRM had an equal hand in that scenario, but I still haven't finished it long after I cleared up the impediments that kept me from playing the game).

I'm totally going to play Amnesia though, if only to prove to myself that I have it in me to voluntarily experience a game where running away and hiding is literally your only defense against horrifying monsters... crap.

Yeah, it might be a while.

 

[Sartan0]

I understand buying a game on a huge sale trying it and not finishing it. But buying it and never playing it once? hmmm.

 

[Cptn_Squishy]

Congratulations to Frictional Games. One has to wonder how much pull Yahtzee's review had on sales. I remember a video profiling him and they interviewed somebody from People Can Fly regarding his affect on sales of Painkiller. The rep said that sales were modest before the review and tripled afterwards.

Considering how much of a nitpicker Yahtzee is (and lets face it, he IS a critic), when someone like him says that a game is worth having because of its sheer entertainment value, it probably is. Schindler's List may have won more Oscars than Airplane, but I'll guarantee more people liked Airplane for its entertainment value.

 

[Sartan0]

My guess is many people do exactly that; buy a cheap 'good' game, even if it's not to their liking, and end up never playing it.

People won't be doing that forever. Time WILL come when people only start buying games even if they actually want them. I wonder how many people who bought Amnesia will actually play it. When customers realize 'hey, I have a shitload of cheap Steam games I'll never play', than this word of mouth may begin to spread and we can get another game market crash.

I mean, seriously. Why buy a horror game if you don't like horror? To encourage the developer to make more horror games? Say what? Why not buy Trine instead? Or something else? What logic does this have?

That is what I get for not reading the second page. Yeah what you said more or less. I try to be disiplined and only buy what I will actually play.

 

[snowman6251]

Glad to see their having some success. Zero Punctuation probably did wonders for the game. I know that's the reason that I bought it. Its definitely the scariest game I've ever played and I'm glad to see someone knows the difference between a horror game and an action game with ugly bad guys.

I greatly anticipate their next game. If its anything like Amnesia I'm sure I'll love it.

 

[JUMBO PALACE]

Well good for them! I would have bought a copy, but for some reason my laptop flips a shit whenever I play the demo and my cursor gets locked at the top left of the screen, and I'm scared to buy the full game :/

 

[Weaver]

I find it funny that the last true horror studio around is an indie developer on the PC!

 

[Baresark]

This game was fantastic, this studio deserves all the accolades they are getting. This game even made Zero Punctuations top 5, he is the pickiest guy ever. I'm looking forward to the next game they are going to release.

 

[Baresark]

Edit: Double post

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

It's not like they didn't get recognition with Penumbra.

I still have to play through that game (got the Collection). Have a gigantic backlog now, though, so it'll have to wait at least until after I finish Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth.

If you haven't played Amnesia, or for that matter Penumbra. Do it. Those two games were what Call of Cthulhu was supposed to be.

I didn't really enjoy either Amnesia or Penumbra. Sure it was scary, but as far as good gameplay went, I couldn't enjoy it.

 

[Freyar]

Con-freaking-gratulations. I'm absolutely thrilled to hear the studio's doing great after the Holiday sales. I've been pushing as hard as I can on it by word-of-mouth as well.

No, I haven't beaten it yet. >>;

 

[Mr.Something]

TotalBiscuit did a live recording of himself playing Amnesia as his Halloween special and part 1 of the video has over 300k views at this moment; part 2 has 175k views as well.
Link: http://www.youtube.com/user/TotalHalibut#p/u/147/snnB8C5sDkY
YouTube and other means of free publicity helped Minecraft become an enormous success as well.

 

[Distorted Stu]

It is a worthy game, same my pc isnt powerful enough at the moment to play it without graphical glitches :/

 

[ImprovizoR]

More people should have bought this game. I bought it twice. One for myself and one for my friend. And I don't regret it. I want to support indie developers. They, more than anyone else need the money. They know how to make quality games.