Amnesia Studio Reaps the Rewards of Making a Good Game

[Dfskelleton]

I loved Amnesia, and I picked up Black Plague in the steam sale. I'm glad frictional is keeping in business, they're freaking awesome.
I salute you, Frictional. You've made a game that actually scares me.

 

[XT inc]

Pssh this has to be an early april fools joke. All the big name companies have proven making annual cookie cutter gamers is the best way to go. You can't make money with good games that is just silly.

 

[BloodRed Pixel]

Glad to see it work out for a small indy company... I want to play Amnesia, but the demo wont work unfortunately... Also, I'm not sure how well it could run on my Macbook... Probably not to well...

depends on the MacBook graphics chips. A GMA950 will NOT work, I tried it.
An X3100 gfx will run the Penumbra Series well. Anything better than that will be no problem for Amnesia.

Frictional Games are so friggingly cool and scary. for me they redefined the whole genre of horror where only VERY few games can copare to.

Just checked, it said my Chipset Model is a GMA X3100, though for some reason amnesia still never gets to the starting menu.

Yes, as I said: you need something BETTER than the X3100 to run Amnesia. sorry.

(PS: I have a TON of Games I bought for cheap that I cannot run now. Because of my GMA950 chipset.
I played Penumbra Series on my wife´s G4 1.something GHz Powerbook. But it has as dedicated ATI9600 chipset. So it ran well. But when OS X Lion comes next Summer I will get a decent MacBook Pro with it and then I can run all the games I bought for cheap recently. )

 

[Flac00]

Glad to see it work out for a small indy company... I want to play Amnesia, but the demo wont work unfortunately... Also, I'm not sure how well it could run on my Macbook... Probably not to well...

It worked fine with my iMac, I would just advise putting it on lower settings.

 

[ShadowsofHope]

I've got the demo for it right now, sitting on my desktop.

..And I am very hesitant to play it, to be perfectly honest. Considering some of the comments on it's success of fear-instilling atmosphere, no less.

 

[Outright Villainy]

I thought it was a good game, and the horror was extremely well done, but the experienced was somewhat marred by constant crashes, which completely halted my progress.

Because of that, I can't honestly recommend it to anyone.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I've already stated [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/jump/6.243172.8832993] the issues I've had with the Penumbra series and the Amnesia demo... but I went ahead and bought the game anyway during the big holiday sale. I might end up playing it one of these days, even, right after I finish Overture, then go through Black Plague and Requiem....

...yeah, wouldn't recommend that anybody hold their breath.

 

[Godhead]

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.

Well, yeah that is true, but it was the same basic deal I had with Silent Hill 2. Not very good game play, but the the story, and the atmosphere sucked me in well enough for me not to care.

 

[daemon37]

As they would say here in Ausland "Good on ya Frictional Games." They deserve every penny.

 

[Kyoh]

For Amnesia and all horror/action games that involve severed limbs, I have a question for you:

Where do all the severed pelvis' go?

I mean, I find arms, legs, heads, torsos and all matter of bones lying around, but no pelvis'. I know Amnesia isn't afraid to show a few long ones, cause they were clearly visible on the full body corpses, but there's never really a severed ass lying around.

Not that I want to find any, really, it's just odd.

Though now that I think about it, those zombies were mumbling "balls" instead of "brains"...

The horror.

 

[Stevepinto3]

I'm glad that I'm not the only one that bought it that is too scared to play it for more than five minutes. One of these days I'm gonna grow a pair and actually get through it.

 

[Ogargd]

It's good it sold lot's, it knew what kind of game it was (obviously) and it did it incredibly well.

 

[DTWolfwood]

Steam sales! damn you for taking my money on impulse!! XD

I almost bought this game just to have, but the fact many said it was actually scary kept me away, yes im a coward when it comes to a proper Horror game. and thanks in no small part to Yahtzee's review [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/zero-punctuation/2092-Amnesia-The-Dark-Descent] of the game

 

[Jonci]

Oh man. I haven't even gotten around to playing Amnesia's full game. I only tried the demo, but after the pants-ruining third section having me panicking in turning a wheel because that invisible horror is splashing his way back to me, I knew I was buying it. With the holiday sales, I picked up all of Frictional Games's games.

 

[SinisterGehe]

The game wasn't actually all that fun, and I never finished it.

But every single gamer should buy this game and try it, so they know how REAL horror is done properly in a videogame.

What isn't horror something like this? Nice American space marine grunt with bigger shoulders than hes weapon, and weapon twice the size of that, walking along in a big tunnel which is lighted really bright and zombies pop behind every corner and end up around the tunnel by the power of high-explosive cluster bomb. And in the end theres a big boobed model helplessly being restrained by a Satan himself and hes weak point is only more high-velocity-explosives?
OH yeah that was splatter... Ahh... I been confused by all those big budget games under the horror game section of my local gamestop...
/Sarcasm

The environment in that game is so spooky, it is hard to get used to it, the sounds distract your thougha ll the time... And the music and sound-effects are composed by a Finn... Yay we?

 

[pokepuke]

It was probably also their most pirated game to date. Darn those pirates for keeping a good developer down!

 

 

[Vohn_exel]

Glad to see it work out for a small indy company... I want to play Amnesia, but the demo wont work unfortunately... Also, I'm not sure how well it could run on my Macbook... Probably not to well...

This is something I had trouble with as well. Turn off SSAO and you shouldn't have any problems, if you do, turn the resolution down, and fiddle with the settings. I LOVE this game not only because it's awesome to play, but because my machine can handle it with only a little lag in really huge areas.

It's awesome that Frictional are getting the response they deserve. I can't wait to see what other games they come out with!

Sorry, I'm not really the go to guy when it comes to computer terms so this might sound a bit stupid as well buuuuuut... What's SSAO?

Haha, I'm the same way, trust me. But, when you start up the game, it brings up that white box where you can adjust the settings, right? Click on graphics or graphical or whatever, and click on advanced. There, you'll see SSAO with a check next to it. Uncheck that, and hopefully you'll be good to go.

Also, if the game doesn't start up at all and you're on windows 7, try installing an Open GL thing on your computer. I don't know what that is, but google it and I'm sure something will come up. Apparently, some of the people on the Steam Forums were having trouble, and that solved it.

 

[irequirefood]

Great to hear. You guys are amazing, keep up the awesome work

 

[Flying Dagger]

this game is too scary for me to play it.
and I consider myself someone who it is very hard to scare.