Every move that we make thus becomes a compromise. We’ll also lose our sanity if we stay in the dark. We can’t look directly at the Gatherer or we’ll lose our sanity, making it difficult to keep track of its location. There’s a catch, naturally - a few of them. Basically, we’re tasked with exploring a dark environment while trying to stay hidden from a dangerous creature, a Gatherer. They’re relatively simple scenes, though. When people describe Amnesia as one of the scariest games of all time, they often cite these hunting scenes as the reason why. The central hook of The Dark Descent is the monster that hunts you through certain sections of the game. It succeeds on both fronts, but ironically those success actually undermine the game as a whole. It wants to make you fear for your life and fear for your soul.

Even by today’s standards it’s an ambitious game, evoking psychological horror through a Lovecraftian story and mechanics of insanity, while also evoking physical horror through the threat of otherworldly monsters and limited survival resources. However, it still largely succeeds in what it sets out to do. Playing it for the first time six years after its initial release, it does feel a little dated, and it certainly doesn’t live up to it’s reputation as a horror masterpiece. Amnesia: The Dark Descent is still a good horror game.

Amnesia the dark descent gatherers