Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs will be “fairly traditional yet quietly radical in other ways,” says Pinchbeck

By Stephany Nunneley

Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs will be “fairly traditional in some ways,” yet “quietly radical in others,” according to thechineseroom’s Dan Pinchbeck.

Speaking with GameInformer, Pinchbeck detailed how A Machine for Pigs takes atmospheric interaction from Dear Esther, and mixes it with the horror the player felt when playing Amnesia. It sounds as though it be one, volatile cocktail of scares with heart palpitations galore.

“Amnesia is fairly traditional in some ways but quietly radical in others,” said Pinchbeck. “One of the things it really does is it’s about buying the player emotional time and space to have this amazing emotional reaction to what’s going on, particularly in the terms of the horror, which is really self-generated.

“That’s a really natural fit with the types of things we were doing with Dear Esther. It’s the kind of focus on story and emotional space that should slot into the Amnesia architecture pretty well. Because an awful lot of that in the Dark Descent is you walking down a corridor or hiding in a cupboard, doing all the work of the graphics card imagining what’s on the other side of the door from you. That’s a weirdly parallel thing to what’s going on in Dear Esther, having a bunch of ideas thrown at you and really you’re building the story that’s just out of reach.”

Pinchbeck added that Frictional Games’, which is executive producing the game, is providing “very extensive feedback” and support for the title, yet it has essentially allowed thechineseroom to just take its baby and run with it.

“Effectively, they pay for the game and then we’re going off making it,” he said. “Every few months we drop a bunch of levels on them, they give us very extensive feedback, and we work through that crazy process together. And they’re on hand to support any kind of technical issues we have with the engine.

“We have this really nice relationship where we’ve got an enormous amount of creative freedom but we also have all this support whenever we want it. They’re great to work with in terms of honing the levels down because they’re so clued in now for how to creative the right kind of experiences for horror games.

“We’ve got access to some of the best horror designers out there. They’re helping us make this the best game it possibly can be. They steer and support us as we go along.”

Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs is due early 2013.