Amnesia studio Frictional Games says it hopes to evoke “less primitive” emotions than fear in its next game, but it’ll still be a very scary experience – and it might be on consoles too.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a viciously frightening game. If you’ve played it for any significant length of time, you’ve probably spent at least few minutes wondering why you were inflicting this sort of horrific awfulness upon yourself when you could be doing more pleasant things like… well, anything, really. And while the team’s original sales goals were modest – 24,000 during the first two months or Frictional would be forced to close down – the game recently topped 400,000 units sold and continues to sell.
“The press response was very nice – both in terms of coverage and grading – but even more fun and surprising was the player response that continues almost a year after,” Amnesia project manager Thomas Grip told Joystiq. “Sales-wise it’s, of course, also overwhelming, and I think especially how good it is still selling even a year after.”
Grip said Frictional is considering another Amnesia-related project but its main focus is to expand upon the game’s experience. “We have been so focused on just creating fear that we want to see if we can evoke other, less primitive emotions as well,” he explained. “This means our next game will not have super-focus on just horror. However, the other goals we are striving for will definitely result in a scary atmosphere.”
And while the differences in developing for consoles as opposed to the PC are “a bit of a hassle,” Frictional would nonetheless like to tackle the console market with its next game. “We are developing to cram what we can out of what we think the average PC rig will look like in the two years or so when the next game is release,” Grip said. “At the same time, we’re keeping an eye on what the most pressing console limits are so we still can make a port from the PC.”
Back in July, Grip wrote an excellent look back at the trials and tribulations of the development of Amnesia, which ended up a far different game that Frictional had originally intended and almost didn’t make it to the finish line at all. Check out The Terrifying Tale of Amnesia, right here at The Escapist.
