Amnesia is a great horror game, and one of the most immersive games I have played. It has a dark HP Lovecraft inspired story that you, the protagonist Daniel discovery throughout the game through flashbacks and diary notes.

The game starts off with you, Daniel, waking up in a Prussian castle with a note along the lines of,

“Hello me, I took something to make me forget the terrible things that have happened. Now go kill this man in the basement…”

It is a sparse starting point, and that was a nice way to ease into the game. From the beginning, the atmosphere and ambient noises are unsettling, but manageable. Once you reach a particular point, the game becomes horrifically efficient at being scary.

Did I mention there is no way to defend yourself? So, while there are only a few monsters at a time, you cannot dispose of them. You have to sneak around them and try to avoid even looking at them. Why?

Amnesia has a “in/sanity” effect. So if you witness something spooky, you start to breath hard and your vision blurs. If you hang out in the dark too long, you might see cockroaches run across your screen. If you literally run into a Brute, your become so terrified that your escape turns resembles a bad dream. The kind where you feel like you are running through molasses and they big scary thing is right behind you at all times. It really does get your heart rate up, so sometimes I could only play for a few minutes at a time. Then I would have enough energy to run a few miles…

I took about 20 hours to go through it, and being that the developers and others say it is only an 6-8 hour game, I must be a big sissy. That is okay though, it was worth every panic’d minute.