Frictional Games' Amnesia Collection brings three horror greats to Switch from today
Includes Dark Descent, Justine, A Machine for Pigs.
Frictional Games' trio of classic psychological frighten-'em-ups, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Justine, and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, will be terrorising Switch owners from today, all arriving on Nintendo's platform as part of the Amnesia Collection.
Amnesia: The Dark Descent, if you've yet to seek out its form in the shadows, is a stone-cold genre classic. Its creeping horror unfurls within a vast, Prussian castle, with players taking on the role of a young British man suffering from, would you believe it, memory problems.
Rather than resorting to endless jump-scares, most of The Dark Descent's horror is borne of its rich, suffocating atmosphere, and from Frictional's ceaselessly effective psychological manipulations. For instance, an insanity system actively discourages participants from looking at the castle's monstrous inhabitants as they snuffle about, unnervingly close, in the darkness, inevitably causing players to imagine even worse terrors.
The Amnesia Collection also includes The Dark Descent's acclaimed expansion, Justine, which offers up an entirely different form of exquisite misfortune among a series of ornate torture chambers. Suffice to say, things quickly turn sour.
As for 2013's Dark Descent follow-up, A Machine for Pigs, that abandons many of its predecessor's more distinct mechanics - although a splash of stealth remains - in favour of an experience that plays out something closer to a Victorian-era walking simulator.
As you'd expect from co-developer The Chinese Room (Everybody's Gone to the Rapture), A Machine for Pigs' focus is on delivering a ripping yarn - and the result is an affecting tale that blends familiar Lovecraftian stylings with socio-political subtext as players battle their way beneath London, exploring a terrible, subterranean factory in search of their children.
If you're curious to know more, Eurogamer contributor Gareth Damian Martin, shared his thoughts on the Amnesia series' distinct form of horror prior to the Amnesia Collection's release on PS4. And if, after that, you're still feeling brave enough to confront The Amnesia Collection's terrors, it's out now on the Switch eShop, costing £25.20.