Idle hands is a column where Ethan Persico suggests media based on a movie, game, or book.

Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is the second game in the Amnesia series, after Amnesia: The Dark Decent’s massive success. This time with The Chinese Room at the helm instead of Frictional Games. A Machine for Pigs released on Sept. 10, but what should you do after you’ve finished it and want more?

Games

The first Amnesia game is not a bad place to start. The gameplay is a balance between moving through shadows to escape unkillable monsters, and managing your sanity which drains as you sit in the darkness. It is the best game of hide and seek you have ever played. The Chinese Room’s earlier title Dear Esther is also worth taking a look at; it is not a horror game, but it demonstrates the kind of interactive storytelling The Chinese Room is capable of, even without conventional game mechanics.

The Bioshock series by Irrational Games is a great example of what The Chinese Room is known for, storytelling as well as horror. The first Bioshock is definitely the stronger of the first two games, in terms of both storytelling and horror but in both, the decaying underwater utopia of Rapture can be truly frightening. Even though Bioshock 2 isn’t as strong as the first, The Minervas Den DLC for Bioshock 2 is one of the best examples of environmental storytelling in the series. Bioshock Infinite, the third installment in the series has players exploring the floating utopian city of Columbia. You watch as the city in the sky crumbles as opposed to exploring the aftermath, and see how big of a part you play in the birth and death of Columbia. Infinite abandons any pretension of horror and instead focuses on storytelling. I’m sure I’m not the first one telling you to go play it, and with the most solid shooting of the series and one of the best twists since the first Bioshock, there’s good reason for that.

Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth by Headfirst Productions, is a game based heavily in lovecraftian lore, H.P. Lovecraft being a large influence on the mechanics and motifs used in the Amnesia series. Its underrated but far from perfect. The release was buggy and some considered it unplayable. However, since then the PC version has become more stable revealing a difficult and competent survival horror game that would make any Lovecraft fan smile and cower. You have to manage your sanity and your injuries, which if not tended to, will affect your abilities, as you run from the murderous-fishy citizens of Innsmouth.

Books

With H. P. Lovecraft’s huge influence on the Amnesia series and influence on modern horror in general, it’s impossible not to mention him and his body of work. Most of his stories and novellas were originally published in periodicals so most of them are quite compact and easy to read in a short time. Some of his most noteworthy stories are The Shadow over Innsmouth, The Dunwich Horror, and At the Mountains of Madness. The third title basically being the biggest influence of Ridley Scott’s Prometheus, which in my opinion is definitely worth a watch. 

The Chinese Room’s previous title Dear Esther