Amnesia Descending in September
Amnesia: The Dark Descent will sneak onto Windows, Mac and Linux, priced at $20. Pre-ordering direct from Frictional for $18 will net you a key to activate the game on Steam.
The Penumbra series creator had promised to add a developer commentary track after hitting two thousand pre-orders during a sale accompanying the Humble Indie Bundle.
The news is celebrated with the following remarkably dark and dingy trailer as well as a short snippet of music, which you can find in MP3 format over on FileShack.
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ajvitaly
replyIt's too bad Indie developers like this don't have the marketing power big developers and publishers have. This is one game I believe too many people will either instantly dismiss because of a lack of "call of duty" amount of hype, or because they just simply never heard of it.
Anyways, this game is among my top 3 most anticipated games this year (along side Civ V and Portal 2).-
Portal is releasing next year. This does look awesome, though.
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Digital distribution has done wonders for the Indie game scene. Consider the amount of small developer titles you'd heard of in '95-2000, and then compare that to how many in the last 5 years. More and more people are rejecting the hype of the big games, especially with all their draconian DRM bullshit and excessive DLC. Where, for the same money as a map pack you can buy a WHOLE game that'll last just as long as your average AAA.
We're in the start of a new golden age for Indie games, since there's finally a viable avenue (outside of a big corporate publisher) to market your title.-
Precisely. The only thing a little dev can't do is make a bunch of TV ads, and really, when was the last time you bought a game based on a TV ad? The internet (and stuff like Steam) is quite the equalizer.
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"Marketing influences game revenue three times more than quality [review] scores," according to analyst firm EEDAR at least. http://www.mcvuk.com/news/36538/EEDAR-Marketing-more-important-than-quality
You would be appalled by how many people this works on.-
If marketing didn't work, it wouldn't exist. However, like a lot of things, there is a target market, and people who read Shack probably aren't it. :]
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I remember back when videogames rarely had TV ads, aside from Capcom and Konami games for the NES and 16-bit systems. Now we're at a point where publishers will make a national 30-second TV ad for a 5-map pack DLC.
With indie games, I paid the price of a DLC pack and got a game that had 16 hours of fun, replayable gameplay.
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PC exclusivity will limit the amount of sales quite a bit.
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Indie developers don't have very good access to console development. For the small, independent guys who aren't hooked up with mammoth publishing companies PC offers by far the easiest and cheapest platform to produce and release a game on.
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Assuming Amnesia will play similar to the Penumbra games, do you honestly think console gamers in general would give a rat's behind about this game? It doesn't at all look like a conventional fps, it's not 2D, it's not a platformer, it's not a sports game... I'm not saying there wouldn't be people interested in playing it on a console, but I highly doubt there would be enough people worth bothering to port the game to consoles.
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