What We Showed At E3

So this year we went to E3 for first time and did two things we have never done before.

First, we took part in an E3 show, the PC Gaming Show, and showed off a brand new trailer. You can watch that trailer here:

This showcases the player's first encounter with a type of creature that roams this part of the game, and gives some hints on how to best deal with them. This clip is a bit shorter than we wanted it to be and therefore misses some build-up and is a bit hurried. But one minute was all we were allowed for the show. Still, hope you all liked it!

Second, we showed off a public demo of the game (something we only did after release for previous games).

Choosing a demo for SOMA proved to be quite difficult as we wanted to have something that we felt represented the game properly without giving away lots of spoilers. The problem is that SOMA is not the sort of game that can be easily explained in a short session. For E3 we had to make it last 15 - 20 minutes, which for us is really short indeed.

SOMA is a slow burn experience with a primary focus on the exploration of high-level concepts. Trying to showcase this is very different from showing off a game that is about exploring an environment or one that's focused on a set of core mechanics - in those sort of games it's much easier to find a short segment that serves as a good example. But for SOMA, that sort of segment really doesn't exist. SOMA is designed to carefully introduce the player to a variety of concepts and to ease the player into a certain kind of atmosphere and state of mind.

The best solution would have been to do a special map, similar to how we did with the announcement video. That way we could have tried to condense the intended experience into a shorter level. But this takes a lot of time. Setting up the announcement video took several weeks. Doing one meant for public demoing would take even longer as we'd have to make sure it was bug free and that the gameplay worked as intended. So the next best thing was to take something from the game and modify it slightly to avoid big spoilers.

But the problem was: what section from the game should we use? As I noted above, SOMA takes its time to establish concepts and atmosphere, and any 15 minute segment we just chopped out would lack the context needed to properly understand the situation at hand and to be immersed in it.

Our first plan was simply to take one of our more intense monster sequences. That would provide a quick demo that was easy to get into and would provide a thrilling experience. But the issue was that we then would fail to showcase what's special about our game. The game would just look like yet another "run from the monster"-ordeal, and making sure that people understand that SOMA is something way beyond this is very important to us.

So after much discussion we decided to rip the latter half of a level that is about 1-2 hours into the game. This part would showcase player choices, environmental storytelling, our philosophical aspects, provide an underwater revelation at the end and (if the player chose to take a particular path) would have a short monster encounter.

However, our choice of demo was not perfect. Most importantly, by itself, this part of the game isn't particularly scary. This in part is because the demo lacks a lot of the intended build-up, and in part because it wasn't (apart from a final monster encounter) designed to be all that frightening. And while SOMA doesn't focus on "run from monsters", it is a horror game and we are very much intending to induce terror in our players. Therefore it felt annoying to have a demo that didn't bring home that aspect. But still, making players whimper from fear is not really a unique concept any more, so given the choice, it felt much more important to give a taste of the disturbing feel our themes give rise to.

Another issue was that our demo took place in a section of game that we'd already showed off in our release date reveal trailer (check it out here). I think this has led to a bit less coverage than we'd have had otherwise. There was quite a bit of new stuff that players could do in the demo, such as checking out black boxes on corpses, interacting in different ways with "Carl" the robot, exploring the computer system etc. and a previously unseen sequence at the end. But the demo still took place in the same locale and all of the major elements were still the same.

That said, I feel we did the best we could given the constraints we had. And judging from the reactions that we got at E3, people enjoyed it quite a lot and almost all the players came away with the right impression. Both Ian and Aaron (the Frictional Games team members that attended E3) were actually quite surprised how well most people picked up on our deeper aspects. This despite playing the game under far from optimal conditions (a well-lit, loud and crowded room is not all that great for games that thrive on immersion and introspection). Again, just like in our last round of testing, the way people connect to the themes in SOMA went way better than expected, and that makes us even more even more thrilled to unleash our creation on the world!

On that note, SOMA is less than three months from release now! So close!

SOMA is now in BETA

After much blood, sweat and tears we can now inform you all that SOMA is finally in the Beta stage! This is a huge thing for us and easily the biggest milestone prior to the actual release of the game.

So what does it mean? Well it means that we now have a build of SOMA that contains all of our desired features. There are still a few bits of art, a few sounds etc. missing, but the game is pretty much complete content-wise. We've sent this build out to around 40 people to test and once we start getting feedback in we'll discuss how best to spend our remaining development time. At this time in development there isn't much room to make big changes. If it turns out that something doesn't work at all, we need to figure out a not-too-drastic tweak that can make it work, or consider cutting it entirely.

Important to note is that we've already had two big tests prior to this, one vertical slice and one Alpha, so we're pretty confident on the major decisions of the game. We've already tried many different ways of doing things, and honed in on the stuff that works. So while the time for major overhauls is now over, we'll not end up in a situation where half the game turns out to be broken. I'm quite confident that we've created a very special experience, but before the verdict comes in, it's still scary to not know for certain. Especially now when we are at the point of no return.

Once we've decided on how to best spend our time, our days will be all about polish and improvement (and possibly some cutting here and there). In its current state, all of the game's big problems have been solved, so what's left is to make sure that what's there is as good as it possibly can be. Adding effects, improving the art, ensuring stability, making it more intuitive and so on. That's what just about all of our remaining work is about. That and fixing all those annoying bugs that are sure to crop up.

An interesting side-note on this Beta thing is how the number of bugs always sky rockets near an important deadline. Long-existing issues that have not been a problem for months (or years!) seem to pop up an hour or so before it's time to send out the build. Here at Frictional we call this "entering the event horizon". Just like approaching the singularity of a black hole, outside time goes increasingly faster, things frantically break and the known laws of physics cease to work. For instance, over the last week we've had two hard drive failures, geometry disappearing for no reason, SVN breaking, editors not loading updated files and several much-tested features starting to crash. It's exactly the same every time and yet you're always just as surprised when it happens.

Now that Beta is done, our next deadline is Release. Before we can announce that we have to wait for the Beta feedback to come in and then make plans for our remaining time. The time when SOMA is finally out is really close now, though, and we'll let you all know a date in the near future!

And now for a new piece of concept art and a screenshot:

SOMA enters pre-beta

Another major milestone is reached: SOMA is now in pre-Beta!

So what exactly does that mean? First of, it isn't the same as Alpha. SOMA was in Alpha mid-March this year, and since then we've made loads of additions, changes and fixes based on feedback and our own evaluation of the game's state. The pre-pre-Beta that happened a few weeks back was our final big test of that work. The game's current state, pre-Beta, is a milestone in preparation for the proper Beta, basically the full game without the final polish, which will happen a few months into next year. The pre-Beta marks final our chance for us to evaluate a number of crucial elements in the game.

First, we need to check if any dialog is missing or needs to be tweaked. We'll be doing our final recording a few weeks into next year, so it's important that everything's ready by then. In SOMA the voice-overs are a lot more significant compared to our previous titles. In Amnesia most of the voice-overs were background stories that had little relevance to the gameplay. In SOMA most of the voice-overs are directly connected to what the player is currently doing. This means that any changes we make to gameplay might require changes to voice-over and vice-versa. There's also a much greater need to make sure the two match up. For instance, we need to make sure that when a character describes a piece of scenery, it's accurate to what is actually in the game. We're also making a lot of tweaks to ensure that tone stays consistent and that exposition never gets too overwhelming.

The amount of voice required for SOMA is staggering. The games use more voice-overs than all of our previous games put together. The combined recording sessions total up to almost a month. Most of this is active content spoken by characters you encounter on your journey through the game.

The other big task is to check the final implementations of changes made after the pre-pre-Beta. After we went into pre-pre-Beta a few weeks back, the team met up for a few days of in-depth discussions. During this gathering we played through the entire game and made sure that everybody was in synch with what kind of game we were making. Over the years there have been lots of changes, and we needed to make sure that everyone grasped the sort of atmosphere, narrative and gameplay each part of the final game was supposed to have. We also decided on any last major changes to make and nailed down the feel we should be striving for in each part of the game . For example, we had long discussions on how the ending should play out and what sort of emotional pay-off we were going for.

Now that we're in pre-Beta all of these changes are in and tested. This means the game's final form is basically set. From now on we are not allowed to do any major changes and if something turns out not to work, we need to use smaller tweaks to fix it or just skip it entirely. This is a scary phase to enter, but also crucial. There are so many disciplines that are interconnected when making a narrative-heavy game; the underlying systems, the writing, the sound, the art and the overall gameplay flow all have very strong ties. In order to allow us to focus on polish and making sure what we've got works properly, there needs to come a time when the game's structure get locked down.

It is important to compare this lock-down to our previous games. In Amnesia and Penumbra, a level was considered locked pretty much done straight after the first implementation. But in SOMA we have had entire levels torn them down and rebuilt several times over. Partly due to the higher standard of polish we are after, and partly due to the game just being harder to make. From the get-go SOMA has been about immersing the player in certain thematics that takes place inside an active narrative. Figuring out how to do this properly turned out to be a herculean task, far harder than we first thought.

Next week, most of the team will go on Christmas leave, and then get back at the start of the next year for the final push. We are now closing in on a development period of five years and everybody is excited that the end is finally in sight. It is easily the most complex and difficult project we have ever undertaken and being able to release it next year, at a level of quality we are proud of, feels extremely satisfying.

Before we leave for vacation here is a little treat for you all: a brand new screenshot!

(Click to enlarge!)

SOMA is now Pre-Pre Beta

Today is the day SOMA reached Pre-Pre Beta, which marked the first time the game could be played from start to finish.

Four of us have now played through 'til the end and it's really cool to be able to finally really feel what sort of game we're making, after almost 4.5 years in development.

While we've played the individual levels many times, you never really get the same sense as you do when you play the full thing. I personally think it's a significant experience as you now get a mental picture of the game as one complete thing, instead of a massive cluster of themes, systems and scenes. I finally know for sure what it is that we're working towards.

The testing took an average of 11 hours per person. This includes a lot of note-taking, quick discussions and bug-fixing. But, given prior experience, this should give a decent estimate of what it will take the average (and non stressing) player to complete SOMA.

While the game is still really rough in plenty of places, I think I dare to say that we've got something quite special brewing. There's still tons of work left to do, of course, but we're getting very anxious to show off our creation to the world.

New Screenshot and Intercepted Radio Message

Click to view large version.

Transcription of radio message intercepted at XX/XX/XXX.

UNKNOWN: Look, this is the short version. -- [CORRUPT DATA] -- gone rogue. We're not sure what it’s up to, but it looks like it’s messing with the help. Are you hurt in any way, are you guys okay?

AMY: -- [CORRUPT DATA] -- are turning on us! We need to get out of here.

UNKNOWN: Hold on, don't panic. Carl, tell Amy to calm down. You guys can’t have much left to do before evac.

CARL: Calm down, Amy.

AMY: You calm down!

An alarm is heard in UNKNOWN’s mic.

UNKNOWN: Shit. I got to go. Stay the course, ok? Stay the --

Static outburst after which the signal is lost.

The Five Foundational Design Pillars Of SOMA

First, here is a new video from SOMA showing off an environment captured directly from within the game:



Now moving on to the main topic of this post: The foundational design pillars of SOMA. When creating a game I think it is crucial to have a few basic rules that underlie all other decisions. That way it is much easier to keep everything on track and get the final game to play out as intended. For SOMA our intention is to craft an experience where players become deeply connected and affected by the game's world and themes.

Here are the five cornerstones that we hope will let us achieve this:


1) Everything is story
First up, we want the player to constantly feel as if they are inside a flowing narrative. It is so common that a game is distinctly split into story and puzzle/action moments. We want to blur the boundaries here and make it impossible to distinguish between the two. Whatever the player does it should feel as if it is part of the story. We do not want to have sections that simply feel like blockers to the next narrative moment. From start to finish the player should be drenched in a living, breathing world of storytelling.

A good example is how we design puzzles. Instead of having the puzzle by itself, as a separate activity, it always springs from and is connected to some aspect of the story. For instance, if the player encounters a locked door, there are more reasons for getting it open than simply to progress. There are always short term narrative reasons and rewards for getting it unlocked. On top of this, the very act of solving it results in the player taking part of a narrative scene.

Encounters with hostile beings are handled in the same way. A creature will never attack you without good reason; they never do it out of pure gameplay necessity. We want every encounter to feel like a bit of storytelling is happening. To get this working properly, almost every single creature has unique AI.


2) Take the world seriously
This leads us to the next point: that every detail in an environment is connected to the story somehow. Nothing should be written off as simply a requirement for gameplay or exposition. For instance, if you find an audio log you will be able to learn more about the story by pondering its placement alone. There should be no need to "double-think"; the game's world should be possible to evaluate on its own terms.

We constantly think about what each character would have done in a situation, and shape the environment accordingly. For instance, in one level, we started out with scratches on the walls but later realized the character had access to a whiteboard pen and changed the graphics accordingly.

It's so easy to justify design "because the game needs it" even if it doesn't make sense to the story. But for each such thing you do, the less seriously the player will approach the environment. In SOMA a big part of the game is to ponder the situation you are in.Therefore it's crucial that players consider the world from a story view, and in order for that to happen we must provide them the opportunity to do so.


3) The player is in charge
When you invest this much in a setting, it's important to make sure that players feel connected to it. In order to this we need to put a bigger responsibility on the player. An environment quickly loses its sense of realism if it is extremely streamlined and does not allow you to make choices. The player must be the one that drives the narrative forward.

The game never tells the player exactly how to progress. There may be hints and other implicit guidance, but in the end it must be the player that figures out what to do next. If a game is constantly flashing up cues with objectives or showing arrows pointing where to go, the player will never take on the world at a deeper level. If it takes some effort to progress, players are forced to understand and mentally map the surroundings in a way they would not do otherwise.


4) Trust the player
This brings us to the next point: that we trust players to act according to the story. We do not force players to notice events by use of cutscenes and similar, but assume they will properly explore the environment and act in a rational fashion. We simply set up situations and then let the player have full control over their actions.

This means that we will let players do stupid things even if they might break the experience a bit. For instance, if they skip talking to a character with important information then they are on their own after that. And if they get hints that a dangerous creature is approaching, they need to figure out that hiding is the best course of action by themselves.

While we do our utmost to make the narrative unfold in a fluent and intuitive way, we will not cater to players that make irrational decisions. The environment is set up to be taken seriously and we expect the players to do so too.

5) Thematics emerge through play
Now for our last foundational design rule: that the game's thematics will emerge through play. SOMA is meant to explore deep subjects such as consciousness and the nature of existence. We could have done this with cutscenes and long conversations, but we chose not to. We want players to become immersed in these thematics, and the discussions to emerge from within themselves.

It feels wrong to just shove information down the player's throat. What I find so exciting about having these thematics in a game is that the player is an active participant. There are plenty of books and movies that cover these sort of subjects, but videogames provide a personal involvement that other mediums lack. We want to explore this to the fullest degree

Just like all of the other design goals, there is a bit of risk in this. It requires the player to approach the game in a certain way and it will be impossible to make it work for everyone. But for those people where it succeeds, it will be a much more profound experience. I also find that it is when you are dealing with uncertainties that you are doing the most with the medium, and am extremely excited to see how far it will take us.

SOMA Officially Revealed

Intro

After more than two weeks of teasing, we are happy to properly announce our new game: SOMA. It is a sci-fi horror game played from a first person perspective with the goal to deliver a truly disturbing experience. Having worked on this project for over three years now, it is really nice to finally reveal it to the world!

The game will be released for PS4 and PC, and it will be out some time in 2015.

Here is the official reveal trailer featuring some gameplay:



Making The Trailer
While the footage above is unedited gameplay footage (I played through and recorded it myself), it is not from an actual game level. Just like with our Amnesia teaser video, it is a custom made map that is meant to show off the general feel and tone of the game over a four minute long trailer. This means that it is not an exact representation of how the game is actually played. It gives a pretty good idea of how the gameplay works though.

Coming up with the idea for this trailer was quite hard. We knew from the start that we wanted to have it as recorded gameplay. It was crucial that it showed that SOMA will allow you to play through its central themes. The subject matters of the game are not some kind of wrapper, they are an integral part of the gameplay. So having a trailer entirely made out of uncut gameplay felt like the best way to show this.

With Amnesia doing this sort of thing was fairly simple as the core ingredient was the player running and hiding from monsters. In SOMA it is much more complex. While the game also has its share of monsters, hiding and stuff like that, it is not what makes the game special. What sets SOMA apart is that it gives a first person account of some deep and really disturbing ideas regarding the self, mind and consciousness. These are things that we take a lot of time to build up in the actual game, so showing it off in a few minutes is quite difficult.

Our first idea was to use a lot of dialog to get this across, but that did not feel right. The player will be be an active participant, and do not sit by passively listening to characters having discussions. So instead we approached the themes in a very direct and visceral manner.

A final aspect of making the trailer was not to have too many spoilers. Because of this, the video does not star the protagonist from the actual game, but a totally different (and minor) character. The events that occur in the trailer are not taken directly from the game either. They just showcase the kind of happenings one can expect from the final game. This means that we can give a good overview of what the game is about, without spoiling the actual game experience. But don't worry, the things in the video are very much related to the game's story. Everything you see are hints of things to come.

Live Action Videos
Another big part of the reveal for our game was the release some creepy and mysterious teaser material. You can see texts and films here:
http://somagame.com/item-2656.html
and here:
http://somagame.com/item-4017.html

First I guess I have to settle the big debate: Are these inspired by SCP? And, yes they are! That was actually the pitch for the whole thing: "Let's have some SCP-like texts on the website to give out spooky and fragmented info before the final trailer is released.". The game itself is however not very close to the SCP-style at all. There are some SCP inspiration in SOMA for sure, but it is a lot more subtle and has to do with how we think about monsters and artifacts. They play a larger role now, the foreboding is much deeper and there is a bigger connection with them and the central themes in the game. Actually, a lot of the SOMA's themes are directly expressed through interactions with enemies, an idea that stems from SCP.

Enough SCP, let's move on to the actual teaser texts and films. At first the teasers had a much weaker production values. The idea was just to use plain text and perhaps a few images. As Mikael wrote these he suggested that we might add sounds to them, e.g. a recorded interview, and that felt like a good idea. But that was as far as we thought about going.

When discussing a release trailer for Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, we came upon Imagos Films and decided to give them a go. Jens contacted them about making a trailer, and they were really excited about it. They even agreed to having a meeting in the middle of the night in order to fit our schedule. Some quick drafts were made for a trailer, but because of various issues, it all fell through in the end. We felt bad about this and promised they would be our first choice when needing some other video material.

A few days after Mikael suggested having voices for the texts, it hit me that we could perhaps use Imagos Films to do some simple clips instead. We mailed them and they said they were up for it, so Mikael converted the transcribed audio from the documents to film scripts and then we set the ball rolling. I did not really expect much from the films, but after seeing the first few WIP shots and production designs, I knew that it could actually turn out really cool. But the end result turned out even better, and it blew my (and everyone else's at FG) mind.

It has to be mentioned how quickly these films were put together. The first script drafts + instructions were sent on the 2nd of september. This meant they had a less than a month to produce the first movie. Then another movie needed to be done a week after that. Given the amount steps needed to go from script to final film, this is insanely fast.

Will there be more movies? We would really like that to happen, but nothing is set yet. Stay tuned for more news regarding that!

End Notes
This reveal has been quite a lot of hard work and there have been way more things to deal with than I first thought. Worst must have been the major server failures that we had on the days before the first teaser would go live. This turned out to be because of a DDoS attack and took quite a while to fix (Jens had to come out of a parental leave to work on it). We had to put off the whole first reveal for a day because of this. It was quite embarrassing, as people wondered what the hell happened and we had to reschedule a bunch of other stuff connected to the reveal (like the PlayStation Europe twitter).

And then of course the final trailer reveal had to be problematic too. Early on the day before reveal (as of writing, yesterday) Tapio, external sound person, had finished editing the trailer, all of David's, external art person, animations were in and all sound was synced and nice. However, as he exported the final version the quality was crap. I had hoped to have a calm day and just code stuff but instead I had to help Tapio search for the error, trying to convert files better, etc. Nothing worked. On top of this, our ftp servers were really slow and sending files took a long time and was a general pain. Eventually, I had to re-edit the entire trailer (adding animations, fades and syncing sound)  using Windows Movie Maker as quick tests showed the final quality was much better there. At the same time we became aware that we also needed an ESRB logo and had to scavenge the net for a proper one. We were now much later than planned and stress was taking its toll. After many grueling hours we finally got it working though. Only to find out the next morning (day of the reveal) that the damn ESRB logo was not shown long enough, so more editing, exporting and uploaded were needed.

In the end it worked out fine though and the whole reveal has been very successful. (As I am writing this we have not seen any reactions to the final video, so I am hoping those are good .. :) )

Now it is time to go back full time on work for the actual game. We are all incredibly excited about SOMA and hope that these 2+ weeks  of teasing and reveal have gotten you all interested aswell.

And do not worry, between now and the 2015 release there will be a lot more unsettling stuff revealed!


Want to end with some links to the non-Frictional people that helped this reveal happen:

http://www.imagosfilms.com/
The makers of the two live action teaser films.

http://www.kohijin.org/
The coder of our teaser site.

http://davidsatzinger.carbonmade.com/
Made gameplay trailer animations, SOMA and FG logo, website graphics and some teasing images.

http://www.kaamossound.com/
Made all the sound work for the gameplay teaser.

http://www.evolve-pr.com/
Who sent out PR and nagged various publications. Jens, who normally does this, has been on parental leave and I would have gone mad if I were to do all that too....

http://www.mikaelpersson.se/
Made trailer-specific animations for the corpse and monster encounter.

Humble Indie Bundle V

We at Frictional Games are yet again part of a Humble Indie Bundle and this time it is quite the pack. Our contribution is Amnesia: The Dark Descent and it is joined by Limbo, Bastion, Psychonauts and Superbrothers: Sword and Sworcery. This pack of games is offered to a price of your own choosing, and part of the revenue, you chose how much, will go to charity. This video will explain more:





I think the all of the games that Amnesia share the bundle with are quite special, and are all really worth playing if you haven't yet.

Sword and Sworcery was my top from last year and there is a lot to learn from playing it. Foremost, it has this magical blend of music, gameplay and graphics that really shows of the strengths of the medium. It is clear that this is not a game that has been created to be some kind of competition, but to create a special, mystical experience. This is something we need more of.

Limbo manages to create a very tense atmosphere, but more importantly it how to use a very simplistic control scheme to create great variety. Nowadays, game often require you to learn tons of buttons, but in Limbo you understand all required controls after a few minutes of play. And yet the game manages to give you varied activities from start to finish. It also never takes away control from the player, allowing for a highly interactive narrative experience.

Bastion is excellent in the way it builds up its fiction. The constant voice over gives meaning to your actions and also let you see the world in a quite different way than you would have otherwise. As the flowing narrative unfolds, enemies stop being cannon fodder and instead feel like proper denizens of the world. By small means a  lot of depth is added to the game, and I highly recommend it in a lesson on how to do story exposition.

Finally, Psychonauts paint up a vibrant world filled with quirky, interesting and yet human characters. What I liked best about it is how the core theme of the game, to enter people's minds, really merges both gameplay and storytelling. Actually playing the game does not simply servers as some filler between plot points, but actually adds depth to the narrative.

Also, note that the sound tracks of all games comes along with the bundle! I mean, the awesome sound track from Sword &  Sworcery is enough reason to buy the bundle alone. The music from Bastion is not bad either...

Amnesia: The Dark Descent gets a free expansion!

Amnesia on Steam now comes with with 20% more horror and 10% less cake. Enjoy this brand new flavor of canned horror - manufactured with license by Aperture Science.


(Might contain traces of potatoes)

UPDATE:
Now with the Portal 2 ARG over, we will release the new content, an add-on story called "Justine", for all non-steam versions of the game aswell. And there might be other surprises too ;)

Halloween Tips. Sale and more!

Now that northern hemisphere people move into darker times what can be better than to indulge in some horror! Read along to get some tips on games, books and movies to check out this Halloween!

What to Play?

First of all we have to recommend our own creations that are now available at a very low rate! Amnesia and Penumbra can both be gotten for as low as 50% the price on several online stores. Right now discounts are available at Our Own Store, Steam, GamersGate, ImpulseDriven and the voices tell me Direct2Drive will have discount very soon too.

I would also like to put special attention on our newly launched Mobile Store. It is an ordinary internet store where you can buy the game by simply sending an SMS. It does not get much easier than that and is especially nice for anyone missing a credit card! All our games are on sale there too and if you are lucky they might cost you less than half the normal price! So do not hesitate and check it out now:
http://mobile.frictionalgames.com/

In case you have already played both Amnesia and Penumbra, here are some more more recommendations:

Anchorhead
A lovecraftian Interactive Fiction game with story similar to "Shadow of Innsmouth" and "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward". It is quite long and very well written and implemented. If you can manage playing without graphics this is a great choice.

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth
Another lovecraft-game, but this time in glorious realtime 3D. Especially the first third of the game is deliciously creepy with a nice foreboding atmosphere. If you can stand a few bugs and cheap deaths, this game is well worth getting.

I have no mouth and I must scream
This is a game that is not that scary, but instead features some extremely disturbing themes. The story takes place in a post apocalyptic future, where the last five people on earth are being tortured by a not-so-friendly AI named AM. It plays like a usual point-and-click but with some fun twists. Unfortunately the game suffers from some annoying puzzle design, but is still worth trying out. And oh, the game works with ScummVM, and should thus run on just about any platform.

What to watch?

At Halloween all kinds of crappy horror movies are released, so to save you from that here are some films that you might have missed:

Fermat's Room
Five people are called to a puzzle evening which takes on a diabolical twist. If you enjoyed limited location based movies like Cube and (first) Saw, this is one is highly recommended!

Eden Lake
A story about a couple taking a trip to a lake is not all that original, but Eden Lake has a nice twist to it. Beware of some disturbing scenes.

Hard Candy
Cranking up the disturb-o-meter, this movie is unsettling to say the least. It starts out with a creepy meeting between a man and a young girl, and then gets progressively worse.

Day of the Beast
To lighten up after Hard candy, you should consider this movie. It is about a priest that in order to stop the anti-christ decides to become evil. He teams up with a mentally unstable death-metal fan to do so. Hilarity ensues.

Lost Highway
This is probably my favorite a Lynch movie, if only for an excellent scene involving a telephone at a party. It is not that scary, but keeps a brooding atmosphere throughout. Beware of weird lynchian plot!

Audition
Since we want to go out with a bang I am rounding up the list with this disturbing masterpiece. The movie is quite slow, but this only helps building to moments of true horror that it has. The end scene is unforgettable.

What to read?

Nothing can tingle the imagination as a good book. So here are some tips on how to invoke those nightmares I bet you long for.

Anything Lovecraft
A novel by the master of horror is a must! For people new to the man, I would recommend "The Whisperer in the Darkness", "The Shadow over Innsmouth" or "The Dunwhich horror", all very typical lovecraftian tales. All of his works is available online, but they are of course best enjoyed in front of the fireplace.

The Terror
A retelling of the doomed Franklin expedition with the addition of a stalking monster. Most of the book is based on true events, and the supernatural spice increase scariness in an already horrific story. This is probably one of the best horror books I have read. It takes a while to get into, but when you do the book will not let you go.

Perdido Street Station
I consider the books author, China Mieville, but be a kind of modern day Lovecraft. He has the same dense, but yet enthralling, prose and an incredible ability of making monsters. The books takes place in a fantasy world, but even though it is very weird, it feels in real in a way. Prepare for some really disturbing imagery.

Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers
Ever wondered what happens to human bodies after they die? This book contains all you want to know and then some. It opens up with describing rows of heads lying in bowls (to be used in educational purpose) and then gets worse. For anybody interested for anybody interested in the macabre this is a must.

Your tips?

Please leave any nice Halloween tips you might have in the comments!

Editors are out!

Just wanted to notify all that the editor tools for Amnesia: The Dark Descent are out. These are the same tools that we used the create the game, so at a minimum you will able to do all that is done in the game.

All info is being collected here:
http://hpl2.frictionalgames.com/

I suggest you start by first downloading the tools here, then follow the guide here and finally start checking some tutorials.

If you have any questions about the editors, please use our modding forum found here:
http://frictionalgames.com/forum/forum-35.html

Happy editing! :)

NOTE: Only windows version released so far. Other platforms coming shortly!

Amnesia "Launch" Trailer

We just finished our "launch" trailer for Amnesia The Dark Descent. Watch here:

Now for a quick making of the trailer:

First of I started out making a text synopsis over the clips needed for the trailer. I had an idea of starting the video with a lynchian stare, that should set the mood for the rest of the trailer. My design process was then for me to lock myself inside a dark room, lie on the floor and mumble stuff while gesticulating in the air.

I then showed the synopsis to Jens and when he had approved after some smaller changes, I set Marcus and Luis to work with recording. I gave them descriptions on how I wanted the clips to be, they then recorded something, sent sample and I mostly told em tons of stuff to improve. It took a day and something like 5 - 50 retakes for each shot (one ended up not being used) to complete. We now had the clips!

One clip was missing though: Some fancy logo animation! This we could not do ourselves so I started looking for a company to do it for us. This turned out much harder than I thought! First finding a company was a pain; all I ended up finding where wedding photographers and the like. Nothing what we needed obviously. After some work I manged to find 19 different companies and mailed em. Three replied! All of which where fully booked or on vacation of course. But from one company, whose staff was on holiday, we got a tip about Atmospheres, a UK company that ended up doing the animation. I think it ended up very nice! Especially given the time and resource limits we had to give the company.

Jens now started working on the editing. This has caused us tons of trouble with all codecs and other crap that never works out as planned (blog post about it here), but Jens has started to master it now and is usually pretty quick. So he cut and mixed with the cut em together, which took half a day or so. I contributed with the graphics for the texts and some quote mining (a skill any dev needs to learn!). After some minor fixes, the editing was done!

Finally was time for Jens to put sound on it. You see, in order to get nice sound you do not keep anything from the original clips, and add new sounds for all. Otherwise you get all kinds of cut off sounds between cuts. It ended up taking Jens over three days to complete this (and is why "launch" trailer is not on launch). The final project file contained 52 tracks, each track having hundreds of sound samples.

Fun fact is that this process of design -> graphics -> editing (scripting) -> sounds is pretty much how we made levels in Amnesia!

There you have the story! Lots a work for a little over two minutes. Hopefully it will lure someone into buying! :)