Dissertation work with Amnesia: The Dark Decent

[fidgle]

I am writing about Amnesia in my dissertation and I would really appreciate it if people could help me out with one of my questionnaires that I have going at the moment, I need more participants for this and it would really help me with writing more about Amnesia. (It is based off the demo on Steam that can be downloaded for free to test out) it only shows the two creatures on it that are the Gatherer and the Invisible monster and please write in as much detail as possible.

Thank you very much to whoever does do this questionnaire.

 When first faced with a Gatherer, what distinctive feature scares you the most about it?



 Out of the two monsters in the game, which scares you the most and give a detailed description why?



 As you played the demo, did you ever consider turning the game off? If so why?



 How does the general environment make you feel?



 Do you find yourself throwing objects when the gatherer is chasing you? If so, why do you do this?



 Explain one part in the demo that scared you the most?



 Would you consider buying the full game to play in your own time? If not, why?



 If you could make this game play a lot easier for yourself, what would you add/change?

[xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Well, I never played the demo, only the full game... I'll try to answer anyway, if that helps!

1. Its movement. It looks rather derpy up-close but the way it moves is just very unsettling, especially if you see it in silhouette.

2. I'd say the third one, Brute, but since it's between Grunt (gatherer) and Kaernk (invisible) I'll go with Grunt. The invisible monster is good for a stressful chase but you get to play around with it for a while and have to learn how to outsmart it. Thus, after understanding how it works, it loses a lot of its scaryness. The Grunt on the other hand is rarely seen until later in the game and thus kindles the imagination much more.

3. I did turn it off quite a few times because being constantly scared is quite uncomfortable!

4. Uh...scared I guess? (Wouldn't it be more interesting to analyze why it has that effect? ^^)

5. No, never. It's pointless and I'm too busy fleeing or hiding.

6. Damn, I don't know what was in the demo and what not... was the wine cellar in there? I'll go with wine cellar.

7. Everybody here already owns it, me included.

8. Easier? Amnesia is already easy as hell. I only died once in the whole game. (Not that that's a bad thing - avoiding frequent player death is an integral part of Amnesias game design.) I don't think the controls could be any more simplified either...

[Macgyverthehero]

1. His overstretched lips.

2. I think the brute because the noise it makes when it's idle or walking is just so abnormal it does not sound human anymore.

3. No, because I always have my trusty 'Esc' key on the top-left corner of my keyboard.

4. It feels very foreboding to progress on each step, you never know when a monster is going to come out from a hallway that your walking into. (Unless you beat the game already and know whats going to happen.)

5. Never, I just run and close doors behind me if he is far enough.

6. At the start of the refinery where the monster just walked past you where the doorway is.

7. I already have the game, and I like to play on my own time with custom stories made by other people.

8. I would actually make it harder on myself because if it is too easy, it would not be scary and that is the point of Amnesia The Dark Descent. Anyway I would add randomization to when and where monsters spawn, because after beating the game, you play it again and everything is very predictable.

[Diz]

I have only recently played the demo, just to see how it was like compared to the full game, but I will be explaining how I felt the first time I played through the full game because I feel that would be much more accurate and preferred information. I hope this is okay with you.

 When first faced with a Gatherer, what distinctive feature scares you the most about it?

This depends on how you mean by facing it, but in the demo, as far as I know, you only see it once in the distance, rather than actually riscing standing infront of it and waving hello, so I will go ahead and assume this means the first few vague encounters.

When a gatherer is near the first few times, you might hear more than you see, so the sounds play an important role. However, in my case, when I actually noticed there was something physically there (Wine Cellar), I only received an impression regarding the visuals, and terrifying at that. I see a silhouette standing far away, so there are not much details, but what you do see is the creepy staggering. You get an even better look at the staggering later on (Refinery). Since Amnesia can make you feel that you are truly trapped in a nightmare, things like these will very likely creep you out more than you might think.

Moving more toward the full game, the first few times when you encounter a brute, chances are you will be seeing nothing and only hearing noises, and the Brute has even more terror to it. The deep otherworldly moaning, the metal groaning as it walks, and simply not knowing what on earth it is or how exactly it looks like. This will terrify you as your mind starts making up for what you cannot see and making you even more scared.

The second thing that genuinely scares me, which is common with both of the gatherer types, and moreso with the grunt, is the music. You hide away and often cannot see a thing, but you hear sounds, and with it comes music. Music sets atmosphere and emotions such as horror very well if done right, which very much is the case with The Dark Descent.

 Out of the two monsters in the game, which scares you the most and give a detailed description why?

In the demo? The grunt and the kaernk, right? In my honest opinion? The grunt, hands down. A lot of players will think the opposite, and I am glad there are different opinions on this matter. The reasoning for some players' choice is that you cannot actually see the kaernk and it is otherworldly, and the gatherers are just severed human beings. I have a totally different experience with this, however.

The first time playing through the game, there is no way for anyone to know what these roaming silhouettes really are. Granted, they first start actually becoming visible to the player after you read the note about the gatherers, hinting toward servants, but I will have to admit that the flashback about the orb in Africa gave a much greater and terrifying impression on the situation as a whole, so when I saw something that actually looked like mummified corpses walking the abandoned castle, I strongly believed that these were ancient spirit visitors out to blindly follow the trails of him who disrupted their sleep. Now, combine this with the fact that you are entirely defenseless in a dark castle. With the kaernk, it would not take long for you to sit on a crate, gather your breath, stay over water and be safe. With the gatherers, there were no feeling of safety whatsoever, so I will definitely go ahead and say that they were the scariest by far, in my opinion. =)

 As you played the demo, did you ever consider turning the game off? If so why?

Once again, I never played the demo, so I will only make a statement about how it was with the full game.

Yes. Well, I really wanted to keep on playing, and I was playing with two other friends watching and sometimes taking over (as there was no way whatsoever I would ever dare play it alone), but how realistic the game felt in regards of sucking you in like the black hole it was, full of anticipation and neverending creepy atmosphere, it was simply too much at times. There was one point, when I entered the prison, a gatherer came after me, I ran, and it was still right behind me and tore me apart. Since my other friends did not want to play at the time, I simply had to give up for the night, because my heart could not take the sense of helplessness anymore.

 How does the general environment make you feel?

The atmosphere is very detailed and rich from the very start until the bitter end, and the music gives off an atmosphere based on terror, mysterious and insanity, depending on where in the game you are (ie. prison, cistern entrance and torture chambers. The environment makes me feel different depending on which part I actually am at, and the story reflects the environment well, but in general, I would just say it makes me feel like I am in a neverending nightmare.

 Do you find yourself throwing objects when the gatherer is chasing you? If so, why do you do this?

Very, very rarely. I do not think I did this once during my first playthrough, but I imagine I would if I truly was cornered and managed to think of using whatever I can when not being totally frozen up. This would only be during an emergency, though, and if a throwable object was right next to me.

 Explain one part in the demo that scared you the most?

Only having played through the demo far after I finished the full game, this is hard, but I imagine it would be the gatherer encounter in the Refinery, as well as the Refinery's creepy and sudden events during investigation.

 Would you consider buying the full game to play in your own time? If not, why?

Seeing as I bought the full game from a colleague's recommendation and never considered to play a demo in order to have a properly fresh experience, I may be eligible for this question, but I imagine if I had played the demo beforehand, I would definitely have bought the full game, granted that I had friends to sit next to me to make me feel less alone while playing it.

 If you could make this game play a lot easier for yourself, what would you add/change?

If I would make this game easier to play, I would remove some music, sounds and scares. This is not something I would do, though. Quite the contrary. It is what makes this game what it is, and this game being extremely hard on me to push through is what made half the experience for me, and I hope I will have that same feeling with A Machine For Pigs!

I hope this helped. Best of luck with your dissertation!

[Ghieri]

 When first faced with a Gatherer, what distinctive feature scares you the most about it?


I saw a silhouette of the monster, but it looked kind of like a plain human. This was before I knew what the grunt looked like.





 Out of the two monsters in the game, which scares you the most and give a detailed description why?



Water monster. First I didn't know what to expect, then I saw the splashing, and was like: "HOLY SHIT INVISIBLE MAN TRYING TO KILL ME!" See, when I first played the demo, I thought the monsters were just variations of ghostly men, because that's what I saw in the trailer.(Looking back, it was a grunt, but it did look like a glowing man with a sword to me for some reason.)




 As you played the demo, did you ever consider turning the game off? If so why?



Yes, I saw was near the end of the demo(in the second kaernk room) and I quit because it stressed me out so much. I came back a month later, played the whole thing, and beat it, and was like: "lol, why'd I stop here?"



 How does the general environment make you feel?



Before I got wise it genuinely immersed me into thinking it was a realistic castle. Before I got used to the scenery, everything felt alien and new. I didn't know where I was, just that I was in a castle. Everything just kind of branched from that thinking. (My mind tricked me into thinking the monsters were just ghostly medieval guards, and my imagination made me think the kaernk was just an imprint of a ghostly man.) Honestly, I would have been more interested in a plot that went with that thinking, but I digress.)



 Do you find yourself throwing objects when the gatherer is chasing you? If so, why do you do this?



I read that throwing objects could make the monsters angry, so I thought better of that.



 Explain one part in the demo that scared you the most?



Wine cellar.



 Would you consider buying the full game to play in your own time? If not, why?



I bought and finished it.



 If you could make this game play a lot easier for yourself, what would you add/change?

I never felt mentally challenged by the mechanics, it was all fairly straightforward.

[Tommyboypsp]

When first faced with a Gatherer, what distinctive feature scares you the most about it?
Well, what scares me the most is the fact that I don't feel safe.
But if you mean in the way it looks, it's the unhuman posture. Even if you only see his shadow, you know it's not human because of the way it walks and stands.

Out of the two monsters in the game, which scares you the most and give a detailed description why?
The grunt (gatherer), probably because it looks like something that once was a human. I think in the end, all extremes are human. The scariest, the most beautiful, the funniest etc. things will always be something that subconsciously remind you of yourself, me thinks.
The Kaernk definitely isn't human, so it's more like escaping a shark. Human like monsters are just scarier imo(this is why I think a lot of horror stories include zombies, vampires, psychopaths etc.).

As you played the demo, did you ever consider turning the game off? If so why?Well I never played the demo, but in the first few levels I did, yeah. I was just too scared. I was more scared than later in the game, because I didn't know yet what was going to happen. I didn't know what the game would be like, if there would be monsters or jumpscares around every corner, or if there would only be a few.



How does the general environment make you feel?
I love it. Amnesia is definitely my favourite game, because you really get into it. AFK'ing would ruin your experience and it's just so much fun to just feel like you're the character that you are playing. The gameplay really helps, too.

Do you find yourself throwing objects when the gatherer is chasing you? If so, why do you do this?To try to slow him down, of course! Haha. But I only do this when an object is within reach and picking it up doesn't slow me down. So if I can just grab and throw it right away, I might. But I usually don't, since it never really helps.

Explain one part in the demo that scared you the most?
Assuming the demo is the first few levels, it's either the part in the Main Hall where you walk up the stairs and you hear the woman yelling, or the part in the second level (forgot the name) where you go around the first corner and a door opens and all torches go out.

Would you consider buying the full game to play in your own time? If not, why?Yes, it's awesome. I didn't buy it, I play it on my sis' Steam account, hehe. But I would definitely buy it again.

If you could make this game play a lot easier for yourself, what would you add/change?Just hide from all monsters and wait until they despawn is easier than what I do, just keep going when there's a monster.
Or you could just use the level editor, play without sound, with lights on etc. But why would you want to make it easier?
I would like it to be harder. I love it when a custom story has monsters that don't have background music.