Of course, things are not what they seem. So down we go to fix the machine and save our kids. You’re also told that your children are trapped below in the bowels of the machine. You then get a mysterious call that tells you a machine below the house is flooding, and the quakes are an attempt to clear the water. A quick search takes you through and around the house until everything shakes in it shakes as if an earthquake has occurred. You quickly learn that your name is Oswald Mandus, and that you have two children who are missing. What was once a Lovecraftian nightmare is reduced to a madman’s plot for revenge.Ī Machine for Pigs, like its predecessor, tells the story of an amnesiac who wakes up in an unknown house. The story oversteps its bounds in search of its themes, and then, just to fully shoot itself in the foot, puts the blame for all of its horror at the feet of one man. What begins as a fascinating mixture of Lovecraftian horror and economic anxiety eventually grows too big for its own good.
The entire game will be judged on the success of that one facet, and unfortunately in this case, the story can’t support the weight of its own themes. However, it’s also a risky direction since it puts all the weight of success on the story. I appreciate the new direction, and I think it’s a step in the right direction for evoking and maintaining horror.
Developed by The Chinese Room (the makers of Dear Esther and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture), A Machine for Pigs removes most of the survival mechanics that made The Dark Descent famous in favor of a game more focused on narrative and theme. In that case, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs should be the perfect sequel, as it does exactly that. Don’t tie the horror to any kind of system that can be exploited by the player, thus ensuring the horror stays above any possible gamification. If we assume this to be true, then the obvious solution would be to make a game without those mechanics. Last week, I wrote that Amnesia: The Dark Descent undercut its psychological horror by tying that horror to game mechanics.
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