$20 Game of the Week: Amnesia – The Dark Descent(PC, Mac, Linux, OnLive)

Note: This is the second horror-related $20 Game of the Week for this month, keeping up with our Halloween theme. Stay tuned for more interactive horror!

I found that Eternal Darkness sequel you’ve been looking for. Okay, so it may not have the same themes as the Gamecube classic, it’s theme of sanity still remains, and it’s just as disturbing and frightening. If you play, you should follow the developers advice: make sure the room is dark, wear headphones, and keep the gamma level as is. Don’t try to play this game to win so much as immerse yourself in the experience.

You play as a man named Daniel in the year 1839. You have awoken in a mysterious Prussian castle with no memory of your past or how you got there. All you have is a note that instructs you to make your way to the inner sanctum and kill the castle’s owner, Baron Alexander. As you make your way through the castle, you’ll be beset by strange hallucinations which will test your sanity. If your sanity drops too low, you’ll be beset by strange hallucinations and draw the attention of the game’s monsters (whom you must run and hide from since you don’t have any weapons). You can restore it by igniting light sources, solving puzzles, and moving further along in the game’s story. You’ll experience flashbacks and view notes which tell more about what was going on in the castle. Throughout the game, you’ll be hunted by a malevolent presence known as the shadow. Once you make it through the main game (provided you don’t freak out before then), you can use the included mod kit to design your own adventures, or download and play custom stories made by others. A free DLC chapter called Justine was released for the Steam version of the game, and it was used to promote the then-upcoming release of Portal 2.

Yeah, Amnesia 2 is another one of those ‘games as art’ entries, but the experience you get from it is something that can’t be replicated it in triple A releases like Silent Hill and Resident Evil. If you’re looking for a great psychological thriller, check it out.