Streamlining is the order of the day specifically, the inventory feature is gone, and the only constant carry-along item is a trusty lantern (which is now electric and apparently possesses infinite battery power). The game strives, and for the most part succeeds, to be as immersive and magnificently macabre as one might expect from the developers of Dear Esther. By the time it slows again, gradually shuddering to a final, satisfying stop, you’re left shaken and barely capable of standing, much less walking away. Then, just as you’re about to relax, down it drops you into a soul-crushing blur of screaming and tears and running like mad from pig monsters. Nothing is rushed, and the relative quietude of the early levels works like the ascent of a roller-coaster, deliberately increasing the tension with each and every inch until you’re so beyond anxious that you’ve managed to convince yourself, in a self-preserving fit of denial, that you’re not even all that scared anymore. Though both team Frictional and The Chinese Room have always been partial to a slow build-up of dread as opposed to jump-scares and action sequences, A Machine for Pigs really takes its time wreaking havoc on the player’s soul. Spectral whisperings, glimpses of children – his? – and mysterious phone calls lead Oswald down beneath the reeking, fog-ridden streets of an otherworldly 19th century London, plunging him deep into the depths of a great and terrible Machine as he searches for his two missing sons, and the truth.

The combined forces of The Chinese Room and Frictional Games guaranteed gamers this would be “the darkest, most horrific tale ever told in a video game,” and I’m inclined to call it a promise well-kept.Ī spiritual successor rather than a direct sequel to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, A Machine for Pigs begins in the home of Oswald Mandus, a family man who wakes to discover his precious children are missing, his memories little more than a fractured fever dream of spinning gears and squealing pigs. Sure, it’s nice and shiny on the outside, a tempting test of intellect and courage few adventurers could ignore – but once it’s open, all hell breaks loose, and the makers cannot be held responsible for any ensuing psychological damage that follows. After over a year of nail-biting anticipation and many a fangirlish squeal at the prospect of a whole new descent into terrifying darkness, I discovered that diving headfirst into the Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs was about as sane a diversion as toying with Lemarchand’s puzzle box from the Hellraiser movies.

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