One Avocadoan’s journey delving into the realm of survival horror.
Over the course of this project, I have been developing a deeper and deeper understanding of the survival horror genre. There are, however, still some major franchises and studios I haven’t had experience with yet. One of those studios is Frictional Games. While in recent years Frictional is known for games like SOMA (frequently called their masterpiece) and Amnesia: The Bunker (which has received acclaim and a strong fanbase), there was one game more than a decade ago that really put the studio on the map – 2010’s Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
At the time that work on The Dark Descent began, Frictional consisted of only four people. Initial development coincided with work on 2008’s survival horror Penumbra: Requiem, the final game in Frictional’s debut Penumbra trilogy, with two people on each project.1 Inspirations for the game ranged from Lovecraft to the horror film Haunting, with Frictional members even visiting various castles to collect ideas for the game’s environments.2 The team originally intended for The Dark Descent to be an ‘action-oriented’ title, but owing to difficulties experienced with combat in the first Penumbra game it was decided to shift to a more exploration and stealth focused game.3 This gameplay style would come to be one of The Dark Descent’s defining and most influential characteristics.
The Dark Descent released to highly positive reviews and strong sales, with 1.4 million copies sold in the first two years.4,5 The game proved very influential in a survival horror space that, for much of the 2000s, had been increasingly focused on action. Games like Outlast and Alien: Isolation, among others, incorporated stealth and exploration mechanics introduced or made popular by The Dark Descent. The game also made waves in another industry, as it is frequently credited with launching a deluge of Let’s Play channels on YouTube (including that of famous streamer – turned filmmaker, apparently – Markiplier).6 To call The Dark Descent a success would be an understatement.
Unfortunately, I found the game to be mostly just okay.
The Dark Descent puts players in the shoes of Daniel, a man who wakes up in a Prussian castle with no memory of why he is there. He quickly finds a note in his own handwriting explaining that he had intentionally taken a memory-destroying potion and tasking himself with one objective – find the castle’s owner, a baron named Alexander, and kill him. Unfortunately for Daniel, this is easier said than done. Not only is the castle a labyrinth shrouded in darkness, but it is patrolled by Alexander’s monstrous minions. He will need all of his skills (and his sanity) to survive and uncover the reasons for everything that is going on.
Unlike the previous survival horror games I’ve played, there is no combat in The Dark Descent. Instead, enemies must be avoided at all costs, whether by hiding from or (in rare cases) outrunning them. The latter is an especially risky proposition outside of some required sequences, as many enemies seem to run faster than Daniel and can kill him in just a few hits. The popularity of this gameplay style was likely in part a reaction to the Resident Evil 4-style shift toward action in the genre over the previous decade, although I will admit that it didn’t resonate with me like I’d hoped. I felt myself missing the ability to fight back – or, rather, the ability to choose whether to fight back, or even, in most cases, to run. Which is interesting because in the non-survival horror space I am a big fan of the first two Little Nightmares games, games that are stealth-focused, have little combat (besides a few sections in LN2), and don’t really give you a fight-or-avoid choice when it comes to its monsters. And I think part of the difference comes down to other issues I had with The Dark Descent’s enemies besides just the lack of combat.
I think the biggest problem is that these kinds of combat-less monster encounters work best for me when they act as a puzzle of sorts. In the aforementioned Little Nightmares games, every boss encounter requires you to deduce the monster’s patterns and figure out the best paths to sneak by or distract them. Even Resident Evil 2 Remake’s Mr. X and Resident Evil 3’s Nemesis are puzzles of a kind, forcing the player to keep alternate routes and other such tactics in their heads at all times. For the most part, The Dark Descent’s enemies are not like this. The vast majority of them spawn, look around for roughly thirty seconds, and then permanently de-spawn. All you need to do is hide behind a pillar or other obstruction for a little bit – no real need for much actual stealth or figuring out movement patterns. Additionally, virtually all enemy encounters are scripted, meaning that they only appear once triggered by a player action. It begins to become clear early on as to what actions are most likely to trigger an enemy – usually solving a puzzle, picking up an important item, or entering an important room. This all combines to shift enemy encounters from panic-inducing situations requiring careful decision-making to short but tedious games of hide-and-seek. I really wish that the enemies stuck around for longer and forced you to be more proactive. It also didn’t help that I found the enemies a little goofy-looking.
There is actually one enemy encounter that I found to be one of the highlights of the game, however. That is, of course, the invisible monster in the flooded archives. This is one of the sections of the game I heard the most about before playing, and for good reason. As you progress through the narrow water-filled hallways you are pursued by a creature that can only be seen through the splashes it creates. It is relentless, forcing you to jump from floating box to floating box to avoid it and throw objects to temporarily distract it. It is an incredibly tense sequence, made more so by the deep darkness suffusing the cellars, and the sense of relief when you finally make your escape is palpable.
I also will say that I did greatly appreciate the developers’ decision to space out the enemy encounters to the extent that they did. Other developers might be averse to letting the player go more than a few minutes without an encounter out of fear that they might get bored. With a game that lacks combat like this, though, too many such encounters could quickly become detrimental to the experience. I didn’t run into a single enemy until roughly forty-five minutes into the game, and even later on there were stretches of up to twenty or thirty minutes without an enemy in sight. Such moments do a fantastic job of letting the exploration elements breathe and building up the tension, gradually making the player more and more paranoid. If the enemy appearances were more frequent the game would struggle to achieve that same feeling of dread.
Another way that The Dark Descent differs from the other games I’ve covered so far is that it places a bigger emphasis on the game’s physics engine. So many random objects can be picked up, moved, and thrown – rocks, chairs, bottles, etc. A puzzle may require you to throw a rock into some gears to jam them, or you might be able to move some crates around to make it easier to traverse flooded areas. I quite liked this feature and the immersion it helped create. I did run into problems with it at times, though, particularly when having to move larger rocks and wooden beams out of the way. My cursor would indicate that I was grabbing the object, but no matter how much I pushed or pulled from every angle nothing would happen. I would have to laboriously push the object around with Daniel’s body instead. This was especially aggravating when it would occur during a chase sequence, and I died at least once to something like that.
Despite these differences, there are still common elements of the genre that are present, such as the previously mentioned use of puzzles to gate progress and even the presence of some resource management. Early on you find a lantern that can be used to light your way. The lantern’s fuel is finite, though, and you must replenish it if you want to continue to use it. Along with lantern fuel, you can also find tinderboxes hidden throughout the castle that can be used to light candles and torches. It is vitally important to make use of both resources, both to see where you are going and because darkness has a negative effect on your sanity. Running out of either or both could be troublesome to say the least. Luckily that never ended up happening to me, but I came close a few times.
Speaking of, one of the key and most heavily discussed gameplay mechanics in The Dark Descent is sanity. This isn’t something that Frictional invented, as it goes back at least as far as 2002’s Eternal Darkness (perhaps the most famous example of the usage of such a mechanic), but it doesn’t appear to be particularly common in the genre. (Probably in part due to Nintendo’s sanity effect patent that stemmed from Eternal Darkness.) I ultimately found this component of The Dark Descent’s gameplay to largely be a miss. Actually, let me rephrase that. The ways that sanity is raised and lowered are actually pretty cool and mesh well with the atmosphere – looking at enemies, spending time in darkness, and encountering certain scripted creepy events all negatively impact Daniel’s sanity, while solving puzzles increases it. The problem is the sanity effects themselves, which manage to be both annoying and boring. The lower Daniel’s sanity goes, the blurrier the screen gets and the more input lag you encounter. That pretty much seems to be it. It certainly makes playing the game more frustrating, especially when in an already tense situation, but unless it gets really bad (which rarely happened to me) it is quite easy to soldier through it. On top of that, such an effect strikes me much more as the result of exhaustion rather than encroaching insanity. I would have liked to have seen more variety or unpredictability in how the sanity effects operate, something to keep the player more on their toes. As it is, things are kind of in this weird space where I would have preferred that they either do something more interesting with the sanity effects or remove them entirely.
Up to this point I have been quite mixed about The Dark Descent’s gameplay mechanics, but what I’m less ambivalent about is the game’s environmental design and atmosphere. Really, the biggest star of The Dark Descent is perhaps Brennenburg Castle itself. A labyrinth of grand and decaying halls, pitch-black dungeons, rooms cluttered with books and furniture, and laboratories for unethical experiments, it feels almost like a mix of the Spencer Mansion from REmake and Salazar’s castle from RE4. Despite the game being nearly sixteen years old at this point, the visuals still largely hold up with a strong level of detail in each room that helps it to feel like an actual place. The sound design is on point as well, from the creaking of door hinges to the crackling of torch flames, and combines with the excellent use of lighting and the game’s first-person perspective to build a surprisingly immersive Gothic experience. If I had one critique about the environmental design it would be that the stone corridors can start to feel very same-y after a few hours, although at least the chambers that they connect are differentiated quite well.
I wouldn’t say that the story of The Dark Descent is anything particularly special, but it does what it needs to do to keep the player engaged. The plot is mainly told through audio flashbacks (typically involving Alexander instructing Daniel on how to carry out arcane rituals) and the standard survival horror trope of discovered documents (mainly Daniel’s journal entries in this case). Through these we are able to piece together the events that led to Daniel’s decision to erase his own memory, and there are enough Lovecraftian elements sprinkled around to give the game more of a unique identity. (Even if I actually feel that Alone in the Dark incorporated its Lovecraft influence in a more interesting manner.) I will avoid discussing too many spoilers here, but I did find the game’s exploration of how fear can drive someone to despicable acts to be fascinating.
As with Alone in the Dark and Resident Evil 4, Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a game that was revolutionary at the time of its release but that I failed to really connect with on the level that I was expecting. There were a number of gameplay mechanics that felt rough or undercooked, and there was even a point near the end where I quit playing for several weeks because the experience was starting to feel like a slog. At the same time, though, the game excels when it comes to creating an atmosphere of looming dread and boasts some strong environmental design. I can see why it became the hit that it is – and why it proved to be so popular for YouTube Let’s Play audiences – even if it didn’t resonate with me, and it has still left me intrigued to give Frictional’s other games (the Penumbra trilogy, the rest of the Amnesia series, and SOMA) a shot someday.
Survival horror and adjacent games I hope to cover (in no particular order) – Resident Evil 0, Resident Evil 3 Remake, Resident Evil Revelations, Resident Evil Revelations 2, Resident Evil 7: Biohazard, Resident Evil: Village, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Amnesia: Rebirth, Amnesia: The Bunker, Tormented Souls, Alien Isolation, Yomawari: Midnight Shadows, The Evil Within, The Evil Within 2, Alisa, Dead Space (2008), Dead Space 2, Alone in the Dark 2, Alone in the Dark 3, Alone in the Dark: The New Nightmare, Alone in the Dark (2024), Curse: Eye of Isis, Dino Crisis, Darkwood, ObsCure, Cold Fear, Lempo, Stasis, Stasis Bone Totem, System Shock 1 and 2, Metro 2033, Look Outside, Fear the Spotlight, Heartworm, Little Goody Two-Shoes, SOMA, Empty Shell, Bendy and the Ink Machine, Clock Tower: Rewind, White Day: A Labyrinth Called School, Condemned: Criminal Origins, Sorry We’re Closed, Fragile Reflection, Bioshock 1, Bioshock 2, You Will Die Here Tonight, My Friendly Neighborhood, Conscript, The Callisto Protocol, Fatal Frame II Remake, Penumbra: Overture, Penumbra: Black Plague, Penumbra: Requiem, Lamentum
My Current Survival Horror Ranking:
- Resident Evil (HD Remaster) (9.5/10)
- Silent Hill 2 Remake (9.5/10)
- Signalis (9/10)
- Resident Evil Requiem (9/10)
- Cronos: The New Dawn (9/10)
- Resident Evil 2 Remake (9/10)
- Resident Evil 3: Nemesis (8.5/10)
- Crow Country (8.5/10)
- Fatal Frame: Mask of the Lunar Eclipse (8/10)
- Silent Hill 4: The Room (8/10)
- Silent Hill f (8/10)
- Resident Evil 4 (7/10)
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent (7/10)
- Alone in the Dark (1992) (7/10)
Up Next: Dead Space (2008)
Header image courtesy of the Epic Games Store.
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