The studio behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent has kicked off a super spooky ARG meant to tease a new game with videos. ARGs, or Augmented Reality Games, are a great way to engage with hardcore fans, and game makers use them to promote their titles a lot.
Frictional Games, based in Sweden, is best known for the aforementioned Amnesia: The Dark Descent, which released way back in 2010. Since then, the studio produced two more titles: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs (developed by The Chinese Room and published by Frictional Games) and Soma. That most recent game, Soma, has a habit of being marked by fans as the best from Frictional. Its submarine research center backdrop and horrifying storyline make it a real blast for fans of the survival horror genre. It released on the PC and PlayStation 4 back in 2015 with an Xbox One release in 2017, so it’s been nearly five years since fans have had something new to enjoy. That makes them desperate for teases, and this ARG tease may have actually started in December of 2019.
What began as a strange, blue, blinking light has now morphed into what appears to be a human embryo. Even further, there’s a YouTube URL hidden behind an icon that sits alongside the social media links on the site. That icon, as spotted by Foxnull on ResetEra, via PC Gamer, leads to this bizarre video titled “Box 52, Tape 16.” The 10-second clip focuses on rocks and specifically points to one stone with a blue symbol etched into its surface.
Foxnull did some more digging and found another YouTube code, too. That one leads to a different video that offers no imagery but goes with a terrifying sound. The video is called “Box 7 Reel 2, Partial Success.” It features a lot of background noise with intermittent screaming that sounds a bit monstrous and partially human. Between this clip and the shot of the rocks, the screaming thing is way more intense and likely signals what’s to come.
The videos—their content, sounds and style—are downright spooky. Obviously. Frictional Games wouldn’t put something barely creepy anywhere near their namesake. The studio has a reputation for scaring the daylights out of fans, even on portable platforms, and an ARG that engages the fan community will best serve any marketing efforts by being terrifying. That means fans can assume it’s only going to get weirder and creepier from this point on.
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As is almost always the case with ARG campaigns that lead to huge news, it’s likely that fans have only scratched the surface of whatever Frictional Games is cooking up.
Source: ResetEra / PC Gamer
