A Machine For Pigs?

Frictional Games, creators of horror game Amnesia: The Dark Descent, have another game in the works, and over the past few weeks a few details have been released.. the game may be set in China, and will be another first-person survival horror.

The teaser site, www.nextfrictionalgame.com now reveals a possible title: “A Machine For Pigs” as well as a release date of Autumn, 2012.

As always, people have dug through the clues and found a little more information, gathered on the Amnesia ARG Wiki.. and they have uncovered the possibility that The Chinese Room are involved in the making of this game too.  The Chinese Room were responsible for Dear Esther, as well as Nestlings, an experiment in story and mood, but they also created Korsakovia, an experimental horror mod about madness and the end of the world.

Amnesia: The Dark Descent

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a first person horror survival game from Frictional Games.  You take the part of Daniel, a man who has lost his memory, or as an early note tells you, has drunk something to make him forget..

Daniel must find the Inner Sanctum and there kill a man called Alexander, but is warned of the “living nightmare” which is chasing him..

After starting the game, you get a few flashbacks.. Daniel trying to remember what he’s doing, who he is.. struggling to walk down a corridor and eventually collapsing at a dead end.  Daniel is afraid, which makes me afraid too.  The fear is added to by the panicked breathing, visual distortions and noises of unseen enemies.. as well as the knowledge that you have no weapons!  You can interact with objects.. light candles, open doors, pick up objects and throw them.. but all you can do to save yourself from enemies is run and hide.

The castle is rather dark; there are candles here and there, and early on you find out you need to stay in the light.  This goes a little against my will to explore, as I don’t want to run out of oil for my lantern, and tinderboxes for the candles are in short supply.. so I take small peeks into unlit side rooms, tensed up and expecting something to jump out on me!

The more scared Daniel becomes, the more he loses his sanity.  Low sanity results in hallucinations, making it harder to see and move.. when I let it drop too far, there was a piercing noise and Daniel fell to the ground.  Looking directly at enemies also scares him.. the on-screen hint suggested that later enemies might also see you!

The demo gives what I assume are the first couple of levels in sequence; enough to try out a few simple puzzles, such as removing an obstruction to a pulley so you can open a trapdoor.  While letting Daniel scare himself silly reduces his sanity, solving puzzles restores it.

The cellar level.. boxes scattered around, and knee-deep water, with some horrible unseen enemy splashing his way towards me!

I failed at jumping across the boxes the first time I tried this level, and didn’t make it out of the water before he slashed at me.. two hits and I was dead.  I fared better the second time as I was barely in the water, and was able to distract the enemy by throwing books into the water.  The gate to the next part of the cellars was opened by a lever way back at the start, which meant a careful trip back and then a mad dash to get back before the gate shut again, all the while expecting the monster to slash me again.

This room didn’t seem to make Daniel any more frightened, maybe because he couldn’t see the enemy.

In the next room, there were body parts instead of books..
If you waited around after throwing one of these, you could hear him eating it, and see the blood mixed in with the water.  Nice..

As soon as I made for the next gate, though, he was right back after me.. and this time the gate didn’t shut in time to trap him on the wrong side and I had to run for the next door hoping to beat him to it.  Here’s where the door interaction frustrated me the most; trying to open the door towards me meant I had to stop, else I would push the door shut again with my body.  The monster ended up getting rid of the door for me, in the end.

The game reminds me very much of Korsakovia, an experimental mod for Half Life 2 which I played last year.  The fear in this game.. mod.. is created from the sounds and anticipation of what might happen, especially with enemies you can only run and hide from, though in Amnesia’s case the player character’s own fear comes through as well.  As with Korsakova, I think I’d get very frustrated once there were harder enemies to deal with.  Despite the game being as atmospheric and scary as it is, and being on offer on Steam, I’m still not sure whether to get it.

Mods again..

As if I don’t have enough new games to play, I’ve been fiddling around with some more mods.

Finally finished Korsakovia, though that was more on sheer stubborn determination and a bit of curiosity, rather than because I loved the game.

Later levels required me to climb up platforms made of various junk from previous levels, coming apart more and more as, I guess, it’s trying to show you that Christopher’s reality has.

Oh, and more televisions to find and smash, more black clouds to avoid, and more of the strange story being revealed by Christopher and Dr Grayson’s dialogue.  Remember this one is designed to screw with your head?  The ending does that even more, as you [spoiler]die in a fire and reload your save only to find you’re actually meant to die[/spoiler] because it’s the end, and sit back and listen to the last bit of Christopher’s story.

A friend recently asked if I would recommend this game to others..  I certainly wouldn’t push somebody to it, but if you’ve not already been put off then there’s no harm in trying it.  It’s perfectly safe. 😉

The second mod for this week is a Half Life 2 mod called SMOD.  This is pretty much the regular game plus a slew of additions such as being able to kick enemies and throw the crowbar.  I’ve not played through a lot of this yet, but already it’s shaping up to be a slightly tricker game than the original, though this might be because I’m trying to kick everybody instead of firing from a safe distance.

Korsakovia

An experimental mod about madness and the end of the world, designed to mess with your mind..

The main character, Christopher, is a psychiatric patient suffering from Korsakoff’s syndrome.  He believes that the world has ended.
Dr Grayson is the consultant neurologist at the hospital where he was brought in after an apparent failed suicide attempt..

So, what is the end of the world like?

After an initial wander around a deserted and rather grim hospital, I encounter black clouds which come screaming towards me, while unarmed, I look for a way out.  As they hit, the cracking sound and the flash of bright light feels like I’m being hit myself.

Posters with disfigured, burned hands, commandments to get rid of the eyes.. which is exactly what Christopher has done..

Damage is indicated by cracks in the corners of the screen.  The television is a recurring theme throughout the experience.

The sounds: static hissing, beeping, and heavy breathing.. creepy sounds rising in pitch and volume added to the feeling of dread.. especially during the unarmed sections, in which the only way of saving yourself is to run.

Doors opening by themselves after I was unable to open them and had stepped away..

Blood smears and burned bodies litter the various corridors and broken rooms, mounds of debris spinning like a whirlwind in another room, as well as crackling electricity, sometimes purely visual, and other times an impassable barrier.

Through all this, the script between doctor and patient triggers as you progress through the levels, an explanation of what Christopher has done to himself and why, and what he is (you are) seeing in this world.

In each section, you are unarmed until you find the crowbar, the only weapon you’ll get, and then only after you’ve been through some places you’d have really liked to have it.  Once you have the crowbar, you can kill the black clouds as they attack.  The ones you can see, at least.. there are a few bugs in this game, one of which is the airborne version of these enemies becoming invisible.

Levels are designed to confuse; in the warehouse section there were so many crates it looked as though the escape would be by climbing.  In reality, only one crate was needed, and that was to place under a broken ladder in order to reach it.

Progressing through the game, things become weirder as you leave the hospital and warehouse areas for the tenements.  Collapsed floors, fires, and burned bodies abound..

Floating pieces of concrete making a path to a door floating in the darkness..

As time passes, Dr Grayson starts to integrate herself into the delusion, starting with dreams of the warehouse, dreams of being dropped from a great height into water..

Levels become even more uncomfortable.  I’m in a warehouse again, but the floor is at an angle, and controls don’t work the usual way; trying to turn results in the view tilting and even climbing onto crates to avoid the black smoke enemies becomes a challenge.

I can see why people find Korsakovia unpleasant to play.  Screeching static and whistling noises are at times painfully loud, and tilted views encourage motion sickness; the calm voices talking about removing and eating eyes, and the posters with burned fingers and more, all add up to a disturbing experience – which is exactly what The Chinese Room were after.

If you want to see for yourself, the mod can be downloaded here.  Requires Half Life 2: Episode 2.

Mods

For a long time, I wanted to create my own games.  Lacking the skills of a game developer, and to some extent the time and patience to figure it all out, I turned my attention to map making and level design, as the really hard work has already been done.  There are also plenty of tutorials around the web, taking even more of the pain out of it.  So far, I’ve not devoted the time required to create anything I’d want to show beyond my closest friends though..

Others though, have the time and patience (and the skill!), and there are some great works out there.  I’ve been recommended a few HL2 mods over the last week or so: Awakening, MINERVA: Metastasis, and Dear Esther – and the latest in the list, Korsakovia, is downloading now.

Awakening was described to me as a good game with awful voice acting.  You play as Adrian Shepard, from Opposing Forces, somewhere between Half Life and Half Life 2 in the timeline.
It starts off with a rather long trailer – Combine troops attacking some kind of facility – which pans around the fighting then inside the base, and eventually comes to rest where you wake up from stasis..  Simple enough game – shoot them all!  It’s quite a short game too – I completed it in about an hour.  The level design was great, and battles seemed to be well balanced, although I found myself seriously low on ammo for quite some time..  but yeah.. the voice acting was somewhat amusing.. 🙂

MINERVA: Metastasis really stuck in my mind as the best of the three mods, although all three were quite different from each other.
You begin the game strapped to the underside of a stolen Combine helicopter, being shipped into an island to spy for Minerva.  She communicates with you only via radio messages which appear as text – no dodgy voice acting here, although the language is strangely poetic and could put some off.   Exploring the island, and finding out exactly what the Combine are up to, requires plenty of shooting and some puzzle solving.

The map design here is very open, and although there’s really only one way to go to further the story, you’ll return to the same places a few times during exploration.   I was also quite impressed with the quality of the graphics – at least on a par with the official game itself.

Dear Esther is a strange sort of interactive ghost story, rather than a game.  Had I come across this myself, without recommendation, I might not have paid it much attention – especially as it started off so slowly, and you’re confined to a very slow walk – but that wouldn’t have done it justice.

The game begins with a portion of a letter being read out, to “Esther”, as you look on a deserted building.  Exploring the island triggers other portions of letters, or rambling thoughts, which only seem to become more rambling, more confused as you get deeper into the island, and markings on the walls only add to the atmosphere.

I discussed this with a friend afterwards, comparing notes on our understanding of what happened – an accident on a motorway, drink driving, the loss of a loved one, self-imposed isolation.. mixed with long lost shepherds, stolen bibles, monks and syphillis – all ramblings of a man delirious with a broken leg who somehow feels he deserves his fate..

Having looked around the internet for this one, I find that parts of the script are actually randomised, so if someone else were to play through this, they might have a slightly different interpretation.  Dear Esther made me feel rather sad, stirring up memories of my own, but that doesn’t stop me from admiring it.

I also mentioned I was downloading Korsakovia..
This is another mod from The Chinese Room, the team who created Dear Esther.  This game – experience? – is not meant to be enjoyable.. the whole intent was to explore what happens when you push boundaries and subvert what people expect from a game – with flashing lights, disturbing sounds, and the oh-so-creepy tagline:

“The paramedics report that they were unable to find his eyes. We think he may have eaten them.“