trivard676To date, Amnesia: The Dark Descent has sold over 200 000 copies in the four months that it has been available. This is more than developer Frictional Games ever thought was possible, in fact. From a post on their blog, Frictional stated they estimated that they might rake in 100k sales, but doubling that figure feels good. Real good. When you consider that most of the copies sold were discounted (with some as much as 75%) off, that’s no easy feat.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has a remote interest in horror games on the PC. Frictional Games is known for the Penumbra series, which up until now has been highly regarded as one of the most scary games for the PC. In case you need a little further persuasion? Amnesia: The Dark Descent is hands-down the scariest game on the PC – and for other opinions on the web? IGN nominated Amnesia for the best horror game of the year, and Yahtzee, famous more for bashing games than praising them has listed it as one of his best games of the year.
Much of what horror-gaming fans have been asking for over the last few years in the so-called ‘decline’ of survival horror has been answered in Amnesia and gamers have responded in kind. For the first time in the history of the company, they’re approaching the future and their next projects with a little more certainty. Taking a little more risk in their future endeavours, and Frictional Games is no longer a struggling company.
So what does this mean for gamers? Frictional Games is already making another game, “[using] the emotions that Amnesia was able to provoke and to focus them in a different direction, which will hopefully give delightfully disturbing results.” They wouldn’t say much else about the game, as it’s still early in production, but we can say one thing…
We already can’t wait.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent and the previous Penumbra games are unfortunately only available on the PC, but who knows? Maybe their new-found confidence will take them to consoles? You can purchase any one of the games from their website, and Amnesia is available for purchase through Steam as well.
–jeeves86
