There’s currently no word on when the three titles will be available for the platform, but Abylight has confirmed they will get both physical and digital releases. Additionally, the company will bring Amnesia Collection physically to the Nintendo Switch. The collection includes Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Amnesia: A Machine for Bigs, both of which have been individually available on the Switch since 2019. 

Amnesia: Rebirth, Amnesia: The Bunker, and SOMA are all available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. The former two titles are also available on Xbox Series X/S and playable on PS5 via backward compatibility. Check out our review for the studio’s latest title, Amnesia: The Bunker.

For starters, Asobo Studio and Focus Entertainment’s A Plague Tale: Requiem, which has launched worldwide, is available on Game Pass starting today. October 20 will see a flurry of horror titles developed by Frictional Games being added, with Amnesia Collection, Amnesia: Rebirth, and SOMA all joining Game Pass for cloud, console, and PC. Phantom Abyss, currently in early access, joins in on the same day.

October 21 is another big day, with Atlus’ acclaimed JRPG Persona 5 Royal finally coming to Xbox, and releasing for Game Pass via cloud, console, and PC. Finally, October 27 will bring Frog Detective: The Entire Mystery (PC), Gunfire Reborn (cloud, console, and PC), and Signalis (cloud, console, and PC).

Next week’s free games include couch co-op adventure title Riverbond from Cococucumber and Frictional Games’ Amnesia: Rebirth. The latter is the follow-up to the hit psychological horror series and takes place in the Algerian desert. As Tasi Trianon, players must retrace their steps and piece together their memories to find out how they got there and what terrible horror is pursuing you.

You can check out our review of the title here. It sold over 100,000 units as of March 2021 (without turning a profit, as per the developer) and has since received Adventure Mode. The latter provides a less scary and stressful alternative to experiencing the story. Amnesia: Rebirth and Riverbond will be free on the Epic Games Store from April 21st to 28th.

Frictional Games has released its Adventure Mode update for Amnesia: Rebirth on PS4, allowing console players to enjoy the story and explore without worrying about monsters or fear effects. It also adds 60 FPS support when running the game on PS5. The PS4 version is still capped at 30 FPS though.

Released last month for PC, Adventure Mode essentially removes all the monster encounters while brightening the various environments. While the game still maintains its suspenseful atmosphere, it’s now more of an adventure thriller instead of straight-up psychological horror. Even the audio-visual effects from Tasi’s depleting sanity have been removed.

If that weren’t enough, Adventure Mode also adds some bonus puzzles so fans that have already played through once have a reason to revisit it. Amnesia: Rebirth is available for PS4 and PC – check out our review here for more details. Though it sold over 100,000 units as of March 2021, the horror sequel had yet to turn a profit by that point.

Like its previous horror title SOMA, Frictional Games has released a “safe mode” of sorts for Amnesia: Rebirth. Dubbed Adventure Mode, it provides a less stressful way to enjoy the story. The atmosphere is still “unnerving” as per the developer but the idea is to provide more of an “epic adventure.” Check out the dev diary below for more details.

Some of the main facets of Adventure Mode include monsters not attacking the player (but still existing) and the lack of a fear mechanic. Areas that were completely dark have been brightened up, making them easier to explore and less oppressive in general. There are also a few “bonus” puzzles to look forward to.

Amnesia: Rebirth is currently available for PS4 and PC – you can check out our official review here. Though it’s had a generally positive critical reception with 100,000 units sold, it hasn’t turned a profit yet as per the developer. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.

Frictional Games returned to their seminal horror series Amnesia last year with Amnesia: Rebirth, and though it wasn’t the kind of revelatory success that The Dark Descent was over a decade ago, it will still a solid return to form for the franchise, benefitting hugely from Frictional’s impressive chops to tell engaging stories and scare the pants off of its players. Where sales are concerned, the game hasn’t exactly been blazing any trails- but slow and steady seems to be something the developer is happy with.

In a recent update, the developer confirmed that Amnesia: Rebirth has now sold over 100,000 copies since launch. Frictional explains that sales were great at launch, and though they slowed down in the months following that, since mid-February, they’ve picked back up, and are on a trajectory that’s largely similar to SOMA’s sales.

“The game went to the top of Steam’s best seller list and stayed there for a few days,” the developer wrote. ” From that point onwards the game took on a similar sales trajectory as SOMA had, but during a pretty cluttered release period (with some big releases such as Cyberpunk 2077 in December for example) the sales went down a bit from there. The daily sales in the beginning of 2021 were a bit lower than what SOMA had at the start of 2016 – and it stayed like that for a while. However, sometime around mid-February the sales really picked up again and we’re now back on a very similar trajectory as the one SOMA had.”

Currently, Amnesia: Rebirth hasn’t sold enough to turn a profit for Frictional Games, but the developer is confident that at its current trajectory and with future updates (on which more details will be shared soon), it’ll be profitable for the studio in the near future.

“We feel really optimistic about the future for the game. We’ve seen a recent increase in ‘chatter’ about the game and it is receiving a lot of love and praise. This combined with future sales events as well as a bigger update that we’re currently working on (news will follow shortly) we feel certain that the project will turn profitable in the not too distant future.”

Amnesia: Rebirth is currently available for PS4 and PC. In our review, awarding it a score of 9/10, we wrote, “Amnesia Rebirth is a daring, audacious, and bold follow up to The Dark Descent, that expands upon it, and realizes developers Frictional Games’ longstanding quest to turn human fear itself into a gameplay mechanic to a startlingly large degree.” Read our full review through here.

Frictional Games’ Amnesia: Rebirth, a direct sequel to Amnesia: The Dark Descent, is out now. It’s available for PS4 and PC, and features a new protagonist named Tasi Trianon who’s stranded in the Algeria desert. Of course, it’s quickly established that something is hunting her. Check out the launch trailer below.

Being an Amnesia game, Tasi awakens with no memories. Thus she must explore the desert and other ruins, piecing everything together. It’s already been revealed that she, along with other survivors, crash-landed in the desert by accident. You can learn more about that here (though be warned of slight spoilers).

For Amnesia fans, all the classic elements are here – terrifying phenomena that will test your sanity, environmental puzzles, resource management (like stress) and so on. Check out our review for the game here to see how it fares. Stay tuned for more details on it in the coming months, especially if it receives any enhancements for PS5.

Today, a lot of this sounds rote and commonplace, and first person horror games emphasizing psychological scares over visceral action are extremely commonplace. Amnesia would go on to leave its mark even on major franchises like Resident Evil, which went first person and more towards psychological horror with RE7, and Silent Hill, with the aborted Silent Hills project still nonetheless giving us a taste of what an Amnesia-style Silent Hill game would have turned out like in PT.

The prevalence of this style of horror means that a lot of the novelty and uniqueness of the original Amnesia game is now gone, and players are more immune to what that kind of a game brings to the table by default. It does help, then, that developers Frictional Games decided to add such a delicious twist to every component of the original game that made it such a terrifying delight for players – in the process, creating a game that feels ambitious and bold, while still distinctly feeling like a follow up to The Dark Descent.

"Developers Frictional Games decided to add such a delicious twist to every component of the original game that made it such a terrifying delight for players – in the process, creating a game that feels ambitious and bold, while still distinctly feeling like a follow up to The Dark Descent."

Staples of the original game – such as managing your character’s fear levels, as well as using light as a shelter and a defense against monsters you otherwise are powerless against – return in Rebirth, though all of them have been iterated and built on. Some of these changes are borne out by necessity – rather than taking place in late 19^th century Prussia like Dark Descent, Rebirth takes place in the early 20^th century in an Algerian desert. The change in time and place means that the lighting system sees several gameplay changes. You are no longer using tinderboxes to light lamps, for example. Instead, matchsticks are now extremely limited consumable resources that you can use to light up torches, lamps, and other light sources in the underground caverns and dark passages you traverse in this game.

It sounds like an incredibly minor change, but it has instant implications that change the flow of the game substantially, adding a bit of Resident Evil style resource management. You have to be careful with how, when, where, and why you use a matchstick, because you might not have any later on in time when you desperately need one. Matchsticks can also be used as light sources in and of themselves, allowing you to light one even as you slowly skulk your way through the darkness.

This creates a kind of dynamic tension to proceedings, especially when you also have to contend with Rebirth’s take on the insanity and fear mechanics from The Dark Descent. Yes, you still have to manage the protagonist’s fear levels, and yes, being in the dark makes her more scared – which means sometimes, against your better judgment, you may be forced to light up your precious last match because protagonist Tasi’s fear levels are rising uncontrollably, thus putting yourself in a bind down the line when you’re in a precarious situation and need light – but the absence of light might mean you make a run, avoiding lingering on too long, and missing some further matchsticks you could have found, further perpetuating the loop of horror. Conversely, you may end up lighting a matchstick and attracting the attention of something that was otherwise close by but that you may have been able to slip past in the darkness – but now it knows where you are.

It doesn’t always have to play out that way, but the larger point is that this creates for a very dynamic kind of psychological horror that constantly keeps players on their toes. You aren’t allowed to just hoard and stockpile resources, because you need to make sure you’re not getting too afraid – and giving the ability to decide when it’s light and when it’s dark to the players means that they will each have their own unique ebbs and flows of fear and horror, driven entirely by how they respond to fear.

"You aren’t allowed to just hoard and stockpile resources, because you need to make sure you’re not getting too afraid – and giving the ability to decide when it’s light and when it’s dark to the players means that they will each have their own unique ebbs and flows of fear and horror, driven entirely by how they respond to fear."

Weaponizing fear and somehow translating it into an effective gameplay mechanic that the entire experience is then balanced around is something that Frictional Games have been trying to do for years now. Indeed, we saw some glimmers of this in Dark Descent, though some of that game’s systems had enough unintended consequences that crafty players learned to game the systems in that title. With Rebirth, I feel like they may just have pulled it off this time around.

Giving the players agency in terms of handling lighting is, of course, one very important reason for how and why Rebirth works better than The Dark Descent. But one other very important reason is that Frictional Games have rethought death and the penalty for failure.

Dark Descent had this problem where, upon dying, you’d restart at the most recent checkpoint (without your progress resetting), but to make sure players couldn’t just learn enemy layouts and patterns by dying repeatedly, randomized enemy spawns and placements each time the player started after death. Different enemies may show up in different places the next time around – or sometimes, no enemy would show up. And once players figured out that could happen, many just started to throw themselves at enemies over and over again until they just disappeared, reducing the game’s psychological scares to tangible and predictable gameplay mechanics.

Rebirth fixes this, because death no longer works the same way as it did in that game. There are similarities, of course – you still see your fear levels rising, and you still have audiovisual distortions and hallucinations as your fear levels rise – but the consequences for death are now very intrinsically tied with the game’s story, and how it plays out.

"This might be Rebirth’s biggest strength- the way it marries gameplay mechanics with storytelling, making one crucial to the other, and both in service to the game’s overall themes (and its goal of scaring the crap out of you any chance it gets)."

This, perhaps, might be Rebirth’s biggest strength- the way it marries gameplay mechanics with storytelling, making one crucial to the other, and both in service to the game’s overall themes (and its goal of scaring the crap out of you any chance it gets). While Rebirth’s story connects to Dark Descent, it’s pretty standalone and you can play it even if you never tried out the original game (though, as an aside, definitely go back and play the original game, because it’s really good). You play as Tasi, who wakes up in a desert after a plane crash, with her immediate memories a mess, and no one else around. Disoriented, Tasi sets out to find her family, following a trail of debris that leads her across a desert, through subterranean caves, old forts and seemingly abandoned structures, and more. The story, again, plays out in smaller environmental details and notes, as well as fragmented, non linear monologues and flashbacks.

Going back to how this setup ties into gameplay, Tasi is suffering from a mysterious illness, an illness that gets worse the more stressed or afraid Tasi gets. Getting too afraid causes the disease to encroach upon her and her sanity even further – and the worse her illness gets, the direr the consequences can be for her or for her family, and how things end up playing out for her.

All of this, of course, helps add a reason for players to keep Tasi sane and safe – but it also adds further to the dynamic nature of how each player’s story and experience plays out, and, again, makes knowing the game and therefore reducing Rebirth’s scares to abstractions such as gameplay systems, that much harder, keeping things unknowable, and therefore, fear-inducing. It also, again, marries gameplay and narrative to a level that is rare for most other games.

There is a lot more to the story, things that are best left unsaid because it is better for the player to discover them themselves, but it ends up dealing with a surprising amount of very human themes and insecurities – some very disturbing, so much so that the greatest scares in this game might not be the immediate horror of being in the dark surrounded by unknowable abominations, but the implications of Tasi’s journey, which will stay with you and haunt you for a while to come.

"Special mention must go to the game’s fantastic sound design, and how it enhances the scares so effectively."

Rebirth is certainly a resounding triumph of vision and execution, and it succeeds on additional levels that help sell its central, horrific fantasy. Special mention must go to the game’s fantastic sound design, and how it enhances the scares so effectively. The game’s sense of place and the tangibility of its world and everything within it also helps make Tasi’s plight and her helplessness against the forces that surround her feel that much more substantially real.

There certainly are a few shortcomings – for instance, performance can be somewhat unsteady on a base PS4 system (though this isn’t ever too bad, and are at worst isolated, slightly noticeable judders). Those who are looking for a safety mode in the vein of Frictional’s previous outing Soma (which removed all the monsters from the world) are also going to come away disappointed – although to be entirely fair, the monsters this time around are a far more central and intrinsic part of the game’s narrative and mechanical design, so I can’t see how such a mode would be possible. Other problems can also similarly arise from the game’s intended design, such as a lack of immediate feedback for the player, which may make them frustrated. A lot of the problems in Dark Descent, on the other hand – such as its low replayibility due to a relatively short play time and little variation between playthroughs – have been addressed to a large degree with the dynamic and variable nature of Rebirth.

Amnesia Rebirth is a daring, audacious, and bold follow up to The Dark Descent, that expands upon it, and realizes developers Frictional Games’ longstanding quest to turn human fear itself into a gameplay mechanic to a startlingly large degree. It’s a terrifying treat, which elevates horror to a level beyond anything they have achieved before. The original Amnesia is regarded as one of the best and most influential horror games ever made – in time, I can see Rebirth joining those same ranks too.

This game was reviewed on the PlayStation 4.

Frictional Games don’t need to prove themselves to anyone in the horror genre. With Amnesia: The Dark Descent and SOMA, the studio has built two excellent horror titles- both of which excel in different ways, but both share common ground in how effectively they scare and unsettle their players. Soon, Frictional will be returning with their next game, Amnesia: Rebirth– and with it, they’re hoping to learn from all of their past experiences and create a game that borrows strengths from all of them. 

Speaking in an interview with Eurogamer, Amnesia: Rebirth creative director Thomas Grip said that the upcoming horror title is, in many ways, a culmination of Frictional’s work over the past decade, combining the narrative-focused approach of SOMA with the tighter and more grounded gameplay of Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

“In some ways, Amnesia: The Dark Descent was a newer and better version of Penumbra, and, in some ways, I even think SOMA is a better version of Amnesia,” Grip said. “One of my annoyances when doing Amnesia was that the player didn’t confront the things we wanted them to confront when we first made the designs. With SOMA though we went all in and wanted people [to really] confront the thematics… but it also felt like the gameplay didn’t hang as tightly together as it should have with the themes we wanted.”

“We’re trying to do what we did in SOMA in terms of the overarching narrative, but we’re trying to get back to better lower-level gameplay – which I feel we had in Amnesia – and then combining those two together to form a really coherent and nice package,” he continued.

“We’ve learned so much and gained so much confidence in doing SOMA, that now I think we can really do it on a purer horror experience as well, and that’s what we’re sort of aiming for with Rebirth,” Grip said. “Tthere’s gonna be scares with monsters popping up from unexpected places and so on, but if everything goes as we want it to, that’s not what’s gonna keep you up at night. That’s gonna be the long-term effects of the journey throughout the game and the choices you end up making. That’s the thing that’s gonna be haunting you in the very end.”

Amnesia: Rebirth launches for PS4 and PC on October 20. You can learn more about the game in our interview with Grip through here.

Frictional Games’ Amnesia: Rebirth is out later this month, serving as the latest sequel in the Amnesia series. The story focuses on Tasi Trianon, who wakes up in the Algeria desert with her memory fragmented. However, a new trailer offers a bit more detail on the circumstances.

Narrated by Saleem Henachi, who crash-landed in the desert with other survivors on the Cassandra, it showcases some of the environments that players will explore. While some of these are set in ruins and abandoned towns, others are more other-worldly. Saleem also speaks of dark occurrences and something sinister lurking in the shadows (which is par for the series’ course).

Amnesia: Rebirth is out on October 20th for PS4 and PC. Along with a new story and protagonist, it takes several new approaches to gameplay, like matches instead of tinderboxes. Check out a more detailed walkthrough here and stay tuned for more details.