Amnesia: The Dark Descent

About Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a first-person survival horror game made and published by the Swedish studio Frictional Games. It came out on 8 September 2010 for Windows, Mac and Linux. You are Daniel, an archaeologist from Mayfair in London who wakes on 19 August 1839 in Brennenburg Castle in Prussia with almost no memory of his past. A note in his own hand says he erased his memory himself, that a Shadow is hunting him, and that he must go down into the Inner Sanctum and kill the castle's baron, Alexander.

The game takes away the weapon. Daniel cannot fight anything, so when a monster sees him it chases him until he gets out of its sight. Your choices are to stay unseen, to run, or to hide. You can shut doors and barricade them with nearby objects, though monsters can break doors down. Light is your other resource. You carry an oil lantern and pick up tinderboxes to light candles and torches, and both run short. Darkness keeps you hidden but drains your sanity, as do unsettling events and looking straight at a monster. Low sanity brings visual and auditory hallucinations and makes monsters more likely to find you. Laudanum restores health.

Between the encounters you go down through the castle's halls, cellars, flooded cisterns and dungeons. You drag and stack objects with the mouse to solve physics puzzles, fix machinery, and read notes and diaries that slowly tell you what Daniel did here and why. The story draws on cosmic horror: an orb from an ancient tomb, the baron's rituals and a Shadow that follows Daniel. There are no cut-scenes. In 2018 Frictional added a Hard Mode on PC, in which you save by hand at a cost of tinderboxes, there is no danger music, and Gatherers move faster.

Critics and players rate it as one of the best horror games of its time. It is credited with helping the rise of Let's Play videos on YouTube. It suits patient players who want slow dread and a story told through notes rather than action. It came to PlayStation 4 in 2016, Xbox One in 2018 and Nintendo Switch in 2019, each time as part of Amnesia: Collection with A Machine for Pigs and the Justine expansion. The Mac build does not run on macOS 10.15 Catalina or later. Frictional followed it with Amnesia: Rebirth, a direct sequel, and Amnesia: The Bunker.

How to play Amnesia: The Dark Descent

1. Move with WASD and look with the mouse; hold the mouse button on doors, levers and objects and move the mouse to open or move them.
2. Pick up oil and tinderboxes and use them sparingly to light candles, torches and your lantern.
3. When a monster sees you, run, shut doors behind you, or hide in the dark until it loses sight of you.
4. Read notes and diaries to learn the story and find clues to the puzzles.
5. Solve the puzzles in each area, often by moving, stacking or combining objects, to go deeper into the castle.

Tips

• Do not stare at a monster: looking straight at it drains your sanity.
• Spend tinderboxes on candles in rooms you will come back to, not on every light you pass.
• Light restores sanity, so do not stay hidden in the dark longer than you need to.
• Shut doors and pile objects against them to slow a pursuer, though monsters can break through.
• Use laudanum to restore health after a monster's attack.

Questions