Ripping out the heart of what makes Amnesia, Amnesia, was not the aim it was more about structuring a new, but horrific body around an established skeleton. Of course in following a critical success such as The Dark Descent, it would be both naive and a severe disservice to the established fan base to not consider how a sequel may draw on the most successful elements of the original. The aim was to bring a fresh approach to the established Amnesia gameplay. While certainly some players would have been happy with this, it was not what TCR wanted to make, and furthermore was not what FG wanted TCR to make. The last thing TCR wanted to do was give players 'just more of the same' gameplay established in FG's previous titles. This was critical in giving players a new experience, and the freedom to experiment provided a catalyst for creating such an experience. The intention from the outset was to develop a game that players could not play simply by relying on their experience with Amnesia: The Dark Descent. While technical limitations of the HPL2 engine prevented the inclusion of the more complex ideas, a number of less technically demanding ones, encouraged by this creative freedom, did make their way into the final game. Some of the ideas that came out of this process had potential for very interesting gameplay, such as enemies that would only appear clearly in the peripheral vision of the player, and a procedurally generated three-dimensional electrified maze, similar to Vincenzo Natali's film Cube.Д®arly concept artwork attempting to define the appearance of different pig creatures. These ideas ranged from small adjustments to the established Amnesia formula through to more radical and complete departures from it. This invitation to experiment meant that in terms of both gameplay and story, time was spent during early development throwing around a lot of different ideas for plot, puzzle scenarios, game mechanisms, enemy designs and enemy encounter scenarios.

Such experimentation with established formulas is something that arguably should be encouraged more across the industry in order to keep pushing at the boundaries of the established design spaces that we currently operate within. FG must be commended for their willingness and openness towards experimentation with an established intellectual property such as Amnesia. Creative FreedomДЇG took a very hands-off approach during early development, allowing a high degree of creative freedom amongst the TCR team. In discussing both the game's successes along with these problems, this postmortem aims to provide a comprehensive overview of what was an enjoyable if sometimes arduous development.Д¬oncept artwork for the cut Boiler level. The game has demonstrated success in a number of areas, however the game and the development process itself were not without their problems. Pigs has released to predominantly strong critical praise, but has clearly proven to be a divisive title amongst players.

Amnesia a machine for pigs trailer