The game Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs begins with a quote by Samuel Johnson: “He who makes a beast of himself gets rid of the pain of being a man.” The game critiques the willingness of humans to make life easier with machines and the beasts they create in the name of progress.
Set in London on New Year’s Eve 1899, A Machine for Pigs follows Oswald Mandus who wakes up with a foggy memory following a series of fevers. A hazy Mandus hears and sees his children and sets off to find him, only to realize he must go deep into the heart of an underground machine to find them.
Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is an indirect sequel to 2010’s Amnesia: A Dark Descent and retains much of the gameplay from its predecessor. Mandus is weaponless and must solve puzzles to move on while hiding from monsters.
A Machine for Pigs streamlined the process found in the first game by removing the need to manage items in an inventory for puzzles and the need to watch the amount of fuel in the lantern. Puzzle solutions are close to the puzzle’s origin and the lantern will never run out of fuel, although it will attract enemies. This means the player is never forced to think much for puzzles.
A feature A Machine for Pigs is missing, which hurts its atmosphere and gameplay, is the sanity feature of A Dark Descent. The feature required the player to seek light and look away from monsters, otherwise going slowly insane.
This insanity causes hallucinations and eventual death until a source of light was found and whatever horror was in the room was far away. The lack of this feature makes A Machine for Pigs feel far too safe, with no urgent need to find light or run from monsters to save your sanity.
Even without the sanity feature the streamlined gameplay also works to improve A Machine for Pigs by allowing players to progress through the game with little frustration and challenge giving the player a chance to enjoy the strongest part of the game, the story.
A Machine for Pigs presents a macabre mystery: It’s innocent in nature at first but mystery evolves into a critique of the industrial revolution and in a way human advancement as a whole.
While the main story progresses well and is fleshed out through gameplay, the player can and should collect scraps of paper hidden around the game that explain more about the world. These pieces of paper are poems, songs or journal entries. The pieces of paper add to the sense of dread already present throughout the game.
The atmosphere created by the areas Mandus visits is intense and foreboding. Half open doors, glimpses of creatures running in the distance and events that may or may not be real work together to create an anxiety for what comes next.
The music in A Machine for Pigs combined with the sounds in each area adds a lot to the atmosphere and feeling of horror. The game combines music and noises perfectly and even makes good use of lack of music.
Standing in a room when the music stops and slowly stepping out only to hear a creature squeal in the distance creates a fear inside that not many games can match. Each scare, no matter how small, is preceded by creepy sounds and events that create the perfect feeling of dread and fear scaring the player before they even see what is hiding in the shadows.
