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Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is a survival horror video game developed by The Chinese Room and published by Frictional Games. Originally meant to be a mod by The Chinese Room, the game is an indirect sequel to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which was both developed and produced by Frictional Games. While set in the same universe as the previous game, it features a new cast of characters. The game Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is a terrifying journey into madness, industrialisation and the darkest secrets of the soul. The year is 1899 Wealthy industrialist Oswald Mandus awakes in his bed, wracked with fever and haunted by dreams of a dark and hellish engine.
Available for PC, Mac and Linux
'The world is a machine. A machine for pigs. Fit only for the slaughtering of pigs.”
The game
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is a terrifying journey into madness, industrialisation and the darkest secrets of the soul.
The year is 1899
Wealthy industrialist Oswald Mandus awakes in his bed, wracked with fever and haunted by dreams of a dark and hellish engine. Tortured by visions of a disastrous expedition to Mexico, broken on the failing dreams of an industrial utopia, wracked with guilt and tropical disease, he wakes into a nightmare. The house is silent, the ground beneath him shaking at the will of some infernal machine: all he knows is that his children are in grave peril, and it is up to him to save them.
Step back into the horror!
Like The Dark Descent, this is a game driven by its story, exploration of the world and the constant fear of the unknown.
Think you understand fear? Think again.
A Machine for Pigs takes both the world of Amnesia and the technology of The Dark Descent to new heights of horror. Built using an updated version of HPL2 engine, the game features stunning visual and environment design, incredible music and audio effects and adapted artificial intelligence. These are all driven by a gut-wrenching, blood-curdling new story, set sixty years after the events of the original game.
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'A Machine For Pigs is an almost flawless exercise in lurking horror.'
'…picks at the darkest corners of our subconscious and society as a whole.'
'It will test your nerves to breaking point.'
'…tense, and disturbing… this is a marvellous, revolting, disturbing sequel to Dark Descent.'
'Dark Descent took you on a steady journey into an ocean of madness. A Machine for Pigs will hold your head underwater until you’re about to drown and then bring you back up for air, again and again.'
- NowGamer
- Polygon
- Edge
![Mac Amnesia A Machine For Pigs Mac Amnesia A Machine For Pigs](/uploads/1/0/5/6/105682605/224377077.jpg)
- Rock, Paper, Shotgun
- PC Gamer
Frictional Games have announced that they've now open source the game engine behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs as open source under the GPL.
It's worth noting, that like a lot of open source releases this is only the code and not all the other media assets. A great way to do it, as the original developer earns their monies as people need to buy it to run it but it can be kept alive for generations to come, ported to new platforms and more. Frictional are no strangers to open source, as they also put up the HPL1 game engine that powered the Penumbra Series in the same way many years ago.
With the announcement, they mentioned they had been wanting to do this for some time but things kept coming up, so with The Dark Descent recently turning 10 (yes, 10 years!) it was time. They do this to help the modding community, and help others to learn from it too - they noted how it's 'a testament that it is possible to do this sort of thing, even with a very limited team'.
![Mac Amnesia A Machine For Pigs Mac Amnesia A Machine For Pigs](/uploads/1/0/5/6/105682605/593902319.jpg)
Amnesia Machine Room
Some of the interesting features the HPL2 game engine supports are:
- Shadow mapping with soft edges.
- Realtime visibility culling system that also works for dynamic objects.
- Automatic render batch system of static objects.
- Deferred shading system.
- A full editor with lots of interesting feature that such as picking algorithms and view fitting.
- Very simple state machine AI that still gives rise to fairly interesting and intelligent agents.
- Fairly advanced system for physics sounds.
- Physics based interaction system.
- Own sound system implemented using OpenAL
- Lots of other basic rendering and gameplay tech all implemented in an a coherent engine structure
A lot of it is pretty old tech, however it's still great to see more open source game engines that have all of it together. I think this is how it should be done anyway. Once a developer is properly finished with a game and moved on, having it open like this has so many benefits.
Source code links:
Links to buy copies for the assets / to play them:
Amnesia Machine For Pigs Guide
- Amnesia: The Dark Descent - Humble Store, GOG, Steam
- Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs - Humble Store, GOG, Steam
If you missed it their next game Amnesia: Rebirth releases on October 20.