Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs Could've Been Much Harder. In a lengthy and fascinating post-mortem, designer Peter Howell goes over the game's design process, noting many areas where developers The Chinese Room differed from series creators Frictional Games. It's a great read, check it out. » 5/23/14 5:00pm 5/23/14 5:00pm

There's a fine line any artist walks when trying to titillate and terrify at the same time. But making video games scary is especially tricky. Repetitive behavior—even when that behavior is running and hiding from flesh-eating monsters—doesn't mesh all that well with the spontaneity required to make someone jump out… » 5/07/14 7:30pm 5/07/14 7:30pm

My hands are sweating. As I walk inside narrow metal hallways, I notice that I'm hearing things that, frankly, I'm not even sure are actually there. Hollow screeches. Faraway wails. It reminds me of seeing a shadow in the corner of your eyes, a darkness your sight never catches up with but that you're still convinced… » 4/04/14 1:30pm 4/04/14 1:30pm

"It's not my fault people keep killing themselves." The latest environment trailer for Frictional Games' upcoming space horror game SOMA adds voices to excellent effect. I'd be happy just wandering these halls and listening to people talk. Knowing Frictional, there'll probably be things try to kill me to. Always with… » 3/05/14 9:40am 3/05/14 9:40am

Clumps of probably-sentient, probably-murderous super-fungus. A vent that looks to have been violently wrenched open. A space suit with some kind of tentacles growing out of its head-place. And a dead body off in the distance. Yup, that's where you're supposed to go. » 1/22/14 11:00am 1/22/14 11:00am

Come wander the dark, flickering hallways of Upsilon, the first environment video from Soma, the sci-fi horror game from the makers of Amnesia. » 12/12/13 11:40am 12/12/13 11:40am

Soma, the next game from the folks behind Amnesia will be out in 2015 for PC and PlayStation 4, and it's a doozy—a sci-fi horror game starring a psychotic computer that sounds like an angrier GLaD0S. Here's the first bit of gameplay footage. » 10/11/13 10:00am 10/11/13 10:00am

How freaky is the freaky computer? Well… watch this video all the way to the end. It's around a six or seven out of ten on the freakiness scale, I'd say. » 10/01/13 2:00pm 10/01/13 2:00pm

In the Halloween trailer above released today by Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs developers Frictional Games, you'll see the protagonist's panting, nervous crawls through the indirect sequel to The Dark Descent. Oh, and our own Kirk Hamilton will be happy to see that you can lean around corners to scope out dangers. Of… » 10/31/12 10:54am 10/31/12 10:54am

In case you don't want to watch the first teaser trailer for Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, let me summarize it for you: Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, oh god what is that? What the hell is that?! » 6/15/12 8:30am 6/15/12 8:30am

If you ask Frictional Games' developers, horror games haven't evolved much since the genre's late 1990s/early 2000s heyday where Silent Hill and Fatal Frame showed off just how scary a video game experience could be. Sure, titles like Dead Space and Frictional's own Amnesia capture new glory for the horror category… » 4/26/12 3:30pm 4/26/12 3:30pm

You guys all played Amnesia: The Dark Descent, right? That whole game "happened" before I came onboard at Kotaku, but I hope that everyone here had a chance to play it and talk about it to the extent that it deserved. Because seriously: scary, rad game. » 9/09/11 9:30pm 9/09/11 9:30pm