![]() Thomas: Amnesia was a pretty long and clumsy process, and we reworked, scrapped and started over on a lot of the material. What can you tell us about the process of turning a story into a game? I hope we have managed to bring this feel to the material, making the player truly uncomfortable and thoughtful about the subjects.Īmnesia's narrative, and the method of its revelation, seem pretty well-paced. The things described in the game are things that have happened in real-life and not only in the dark ages, but are happening in the present day too. We wanted to bring this into the game in a mature way and not just go all exploitative. These are all examples of how normal people can commit the cruellest crimes. Thomas: The biggest thematic influence has probably been real life stuff like the Milgram and Stanford Prison experiments, and acts done by Unit 731 during WW2. Can you tell us about your background reading? That must've taken some pretty interesting and dark research. PC Gamer: There's some decidedly grisly and authentic subject matter in Amnesia – such as the medieval torture chambers in the Choir and the Transept. While Amnesia is not directly inspired by the man, his work and style is deeply rooted in our brains. Thematic similarities are probably more due to the Lovecraftian inspiration than anything else. The actual game had great ideas on how much sanity effects a player can manage, and also how exciting sections without combat can be made. Anyhow, during this time I kinda built up a mental picture of how I wanted the game to be, and this fantasy is something that has been poured into Penumbra and now also Amnesia. Thomas: I must confess that CoC: DCoTE is probably the only game I have actively waited for, and what a wait it was! I think it took 8 years from announcement to release. Was this an influence? Can you cite any other major influences for your work? PC Gamer: I'm a big fan of Headfirst's Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of The Earth, and there seem to be some thematic parallels with Amnesia. Often games try to slam stuff at the player as much as possible, but we would rather that the player take it slowly, and build that way. So we try and take it slow and not to rush things. There is an encounter in a water-filled area that we basically build up over almost two hours. Also, we try and slowly build up the game and events. Make darker areas extra dark by having a bright area ahead of it an intense section after a calmer one. Most people play as intended though, so it's a pretty safe bet.Īpart from that, we also try to vary the experience as much as possible and build up contrasts. This means that we take a bit of a risk and rely on the player to be immersed. ![]() That is really our main design guideline and then all else comes from that. Thomas: To a great extent, you do it yourself! The idea is only to hint at things and then let the players build up an image in their head. Can you tell us how you achieve this, and sustain it over an 8-10 hour period? PC Gamer: Psychological horror is at the heart of Amnesia, where the unseen is often more horrific than the quantified. So instead of starting with a mechanic, we started with a wanted experience, and then designed everything else to fit that. It didn't really work well though and we went back to a more Penumbra-like approach, and tried to take it a step further. The first design drafts were for a Super-Mario-like game (honest!), with bite-sized gameplay, where we had a core gameplay to build around. That said, Amnesia actually started out totally different. There is huge difference in how a player approaches a game when you don't have weapons, and it really lets us do things we couldn't have done otherwise. ![]() The most important thing, design-wise, is probably to not have combat in a horror game. This in turn has enabled us to work more on the details, do things that previously were not really possible. The work-flow we have had on Amnesia is a gigantic leap forward from what we used to have. How we should organize things and go about designing a game. Thomas: The main thing we have learned is how to do development. Can you tell us a little about the evolution of Amnesia, and what you learned from making Penumbra? PC Gamer: There seems to be a logical extension of ideas from Penumbra to Amnesia. But considering the amount of people that now know of Penumbra, we are extremely pleased with the success! Hearing Penumbra mentioned along with Silent Hill and the other established horror games makes us all warm and fuzzy on the inside. Financially, it has kept us afloat and enabled us to work full-time with games, but just barely. Thomas: Even though there were a bunch of problems, I would have to say that the game was pretty successful.
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