Amnesia Developer Looks to "Cut Back" on Horror in Future Games

By Cade Onder

The developer behind the Amnesia franchise will seemingly be moving away from horror in future games. The Amnesia franchise is a pretty pivotal series in the horror genre. It gained a lot of attention as it was released during the time where horror game let's plays were starting to really take off on YouTube and PewDiePie shined a light on the series. Both PewDiePie and the Amnesia series really benefited from these videos and the rest is basically history. The Amnesia series has been progressing at a pretty steady pace ever since, largely helping define the first-person immersive horror genre with a focus on tension and fear rather than shooting everything that comes in to your line of sight.

However, developer Frictional Games may be straying away from these horror roots soon. In an interview with 80.lv (via Eurogamer), creative director Thomas Grip noted that the studio noted that it plans to "cut back" a bit on horror to focus on "emotional qualities". It's unclear if that means they'll be straying away from Amnesia and making a new type of game that isn't focused on spooks, but it's easy to understand why this genre has worked so well for Frictional for some time.

"At Frictional, we work on games holistically. This plays a crucial part in how our games look and feel. While all of our games have been horror in some way, what we really try to do is to get a kind of 'playable immersion'," Grip said. "Horror games naturally are where emotions are front and centre. Games really excel at this. However, we are also exploring themes outside of making things spooky. For future projects, I think we will cut back a bit on the horror aspects in order to give greater focus on other emotional qualities. I am confident that these games will still feel like Frictional ones. The immersion, the personal journey, and a holistic vision are what I see as defining traits of a Frictional game – not just horror as such."

A lot of other horror games have pulled from Amnesia over time. Games like PT, Outlast, and more all seem to have been influenced by Amnesia's focus on immersing you in the shoes of someone in danger of losing their life to creepy monsters and not allowing you much opportunity to fight back.

What do you think of Frictional's new direction? Let me know in the comments or hit me up on Twitter @Cade_Onder.

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