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"I have tried everything and there is no way to fight back. You need to escape it as long as you can. Redeem us both Daniel. Descend into the darkness where Alexander waits and murder him."
— Your former self, Daniel

Amnesia: The Dark Descent is a survival horror adventure video game from the Swedish indie studio Frictional Games. It's a Spiritual Successor to their previous Penumbra series, sharing many elements of gameplay and storytelling with them.

Daniel, the playable Non-Action Guy, wakes up in the dark of an ancient creepy castle, Brennenburg, without any memories. The first thing he finds is a note to himself, which informs him that he has been deliberately self-inflicted with amnesia so that he can make a dark descent into the heart of the castle and kill the proprietor, Baron Alexander. As he journeys further within the bowels of the Prussian estate, Daniel comes across his own diary entries, hinting at otherworldly influences, particularly the dangerous living 'Shadow' that pursues him for something he did in his past, killing everyone it comes across. He also finds notes left by an assortment of castle-dwellers that elaborate on the sinister events that have taken place there.

But mostly, he finds nothing...

A later update added two new components to the game for free:

  • Amnesia: Justine, a short bonus game with its own characters and setting. Inspired by Portal as part of a cross-game Portal 2 promotion, Justine follows a woman who wakes up in a series of sadistic puzzles set up by someone named Justine who communicates through phonograph recordings.
  • Remember, a book of linked short stories that relate to the backstory of The Dark Descent.

Followed by the Amnesia series of games.

Not to be confused with the other Amnesia video game series or the Amnesia: Yume Nikki fan-game.


Tropes:

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     Tropes in Amnesia: The Dark Descent 

  • Above Good and Evil: Alexander expresses disdain for concepts like "good" and "evil", thinking them only good for comfort and not something to be concerned about. He reminds Daniel that they aren't so different after Daniel calmly went along with Alexander's plans to torture and kill in order to preserve his own life from The Shadow, and thus Daniel has no better claim to "goodness" than he does — sidestepping that Alexander preyed on Daniel's desperation to convince him it was necessary.
  • Absurdly Spacious Sewer: Justified, or at least Hand Waved, by the sewers in question being designed to carry heavy seasonal flows of spring water. They also function as a cistern system which stores said water and releases it in a controlled manner to power various machines.
  • Acceptable Breaks from Reality: While it may seem odd that you generally can't harm the monsters, this helps preserve the tension since the ability to kill monsters would spoil the mood of the game.
  • Achievement Mockery: One of the most commonly earned Steam achievements in the game is titled "NOPE". Its description reads:
    Left when things were getting interesting in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. note 
  • Advancing Wall of Doom: The Shadow of the Orb manifests as an advancing wave of decay and corrosion that you have to run away from at certain key points in the game.
  • Aerith and Bob: The three main characters are Daniel, Alexander and... Agrippa. (Agrippa is Heinrich Cornelius A., but his character is almost purely Last-Name Basis.)
  • Afraid of Needles: Just before traversing the sewers beneath the castle — in order to keep from being killed by poisonous fungi, you need to drill a hole into the head of a corpse, insert a needle into a copper tube, insert that tube's base into the skull, and then stick yourself on the needle to immunize yourself. Daniel passes out after doing it, and it's hard to blame him.
  • Alien Geometries: The Choir and Chancel towards the end of the game are... peculiar. Daniel also has visions of these when he first finds the orb.
  • All Crimes Are Equal: As you learn about various torture victims, the severity of their supposed crimes seems to lessen. The worst were accused of rape and arson, but a forger got thrown into the iron maiden as well. Justified, as Alexander is just looking for anyone he has a reasonable excuse to "lock up" and torture for Vitae. On Daniel's end, this is also a sign that It Gets Easier.
  • Alternate Reality Game: One of the thirteen indie games that form the bulk of the material of Valve's "PotatoFoolsDay" Portal 2 ARG, see the Justine folder for more about that scenario.
  • Always a Bigger Fish: An off-screen variant. Boy, that Brute sure is scary, isn't he? You can't do anything to stop him and if he finds you you're dead in moments. So exactly what was capable of dismembering one so easily?
  • Amnesia Danger: Daniel's amnesia complicates his forgotten goals, but you later discover that he needed the amnesia to overcome his grief over being used by Alexander to murder innocents under false pretenses.
  • And I Must Scream:
    • If Daniel allows Alexander's ritual to take place, or stays in his cell when imprisoned, the Shadow will consume him. It's implied that this traps his conscious in absolute darkness forever.
    • Can also apply to Agrippa, who is chained to a wall for 300 years, conscious but unable to move.
  • Artifact of Doom: The Orbs. If, for whatever reason, the individual who discovers one is unable to master its power, then the Shadow that guards it will relentlessly pursue him, killing everyone he encounters in the process. When shattered, the orbs emit maddening energy, making them handy torture enhancers, as revealed by Agrippa.
  • Artificial Stupidity: One of the few breaks you'll ever get in the game when encountering monsters. Most of them have horrible vision when you're not in light, get bored chasing you after a while, or are generally unable to notice you when you're literally right next to them. In areas with bottomless pits and other falls, you can lure them to falling to their death (despawn). Also, they cannot attack you if you're on top of them or they are somehow stuck on top of barrels, and they can't see you if you can't see them. Probably justified in-game — the monsters are described as "feeding off your fear" in a way, are more likely to see you if you keep staring at them, and their strength is dependent on your mental strength. If you're good at avoiding them, don't expect much Artificial Brilliance.
  • Artistic License – Biology:
    • When Daniel has to vaccinate himself with a corpse's blood. God only knows if they're the same blood type or if he had any infectious diseases. At least upon touching the body while not holding anything it states that it "Can't be more than a day old." Still, as Lanipator puts it in his Let's Play: "The least sanitary thing I could possibly do!"
    • A rather subtle one: In one of Alexander's research notes a dog is referred to as Canis lupus familiaris. This is the dog's modern taxonomic classification, but at the time the game is set in the accepted classification was Canis domesticus or Canis familiaris.
  • Artistic License – Chemistry:
    • According to Amnesia, combining aqua regia, orpiment, cuprite, and calamine all together note  creates simply "acid." No, the pH isn't known either. Note that Aqua Regia is already a mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acid capable of dissolving gold. Why you must add a copper-based mineral (cuprite), Arsenic Trisulfide (orpiment, once used for poisoned arrows) and Zinc Oxide (calamine, used in cosmetic creams and powders) is up to you to guess, when royal water alone would have done the job of dissolving organic tissue.
    • After you use the "acid" to melt the organic tissue, the container it was in isn't washed out, and is re-used for something else later, despite the traces of acid. Even worse, later in the game, Daniel finds a glass jar. He uses it to transport acid, then oil, once again without washing it out. After that, he can use it to prepare Weyer's tonic — the potion Agrippa's survival depends on.
  • Artistic License – Physics: You can light candles and torches that have fallen over and are lying sideways. If you do, the flames still shoot out parallel to the barrel of the candle or torch (i.e. sideways, instead of towards the ceiling).
  • Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence: What may have happened to Weyer, Agrippa, and Daniel if you choose the right ending.
  • Asshole Victim: Daniel or Alexander, depending of the ending. Either of these two qualifies. Redemptive attempts aside, if we talk about Daniel — he was not even an alien as Alexander was, and even Alexander himself feels a little surprised by him.
  • Back from the Dead: Agrippa in the Golden Ending. The potion Daniel makes for him allows him to be healed and re-embodied in the other world.
  • The Bad Guy Wins: The bad ending, in which Daniel dies and Alexander gets away scot-free with everything. This also applies to the less well-known fourth ending, where Daniel doesn't escape from the cell and the Shadow consumes him, presumably leaving Alexander to succeed without Daniel to stop him.
  • Bait-and-Switch: Of sorts, but done in a panic-inducing manner. In the final leg of the sewers, you find your path is blocked by a Brute standing guard at the hall you need to go down. Fortunately, the area is circular and you can simply get him to come investigate a noise when you make noise in one direction or the other. No matter how far you manage to lure it away, it'll suddenly be right behind you instead of distracted once you go down the hall, and your only hope is to book it to the ladder and start climbing before it gets you.
  • Barrier-Busting Blow: Doors do not stop the creatures, just slow them down.
  • Beethoven Was an Alien Spy: Agrippa and Weyer were real historical figures, Agrippa being a 16th-century alchemist and Weyer being his apprentice. This game indicates that Weyer, like Alexander, actually came from... elsewhere...
    • Agrippa was also an occultist in Real Life, about 300 years before Amnesia takes place. He 'presumes' that he was held prisoner by Alexander for hundreds of years, which would make the numbers match up.
  • BFS: The Brute's left forearm is one FREAKING HUGE BLADE. Getting hit just once by one of these things is sometimes enough to kill Daniel dead.
  • Bittersweet Ending: Two of the four possible endings.
    • If Daniel stops the ritual, Alexander dies and Daniel is able to escape Brennenburg, feeling that he has redeemed himself. However, Agrippa is trapped in the rubble of Brennenburg (though it's implied that without Alexander maintaining his forced immortality, he will die sooner or later, so he's not trapped there forever).
    • If Daniel sends Agrippa's head through the portal, Alexander is stopped, Agrippa is finally freed from Alexander's clutches, but Daniel is consumed by the Shadow and trapped in darkness forever. However, it's implied that Weyer was able to resurrect Agrippa and they will rescue Daniel out of gratitude for his help. This ending is also considered the Golden Ending by some fans.
  • Bizarrchitecture: The layout of Castle Brennenburg barely seems to make any sense from any practical perspective. But then again, its owner is hardly the usual kind of person.
  • Black Bug Room: Virtually any room where your sanity meter drops low enough to give you bizarre hallucinations about your surroundings.
  • Bookcase Passage: One appears immediately after finding Daniel's Note to Self. A second one, this time activated by a slightly more complicated method, appears a little further on.
  • Brain Bleach: The player will feel like they need one after visiting some of the later portions of the game. Daniel himself eventually needs (and uses) some after the weight of all the things he's seen and done catches up with him, and he is forced to ask himself whether he can live with knowing it.
  • Breather Level: The hub levels (Entrance Hall, Back Hall, Cistern Entrance, and Nave) all serve as these, being completely free of monsters and (mostly) of disturbing imagery, safe aside from the occasional environmental hazard and Meat Moss spawned by the growing presence of the Shadow, and usually featuring calm, soothing music. The Dev commentary confirms this was deliberately invoked, with these areas giving the player a chance to relax so the upcoming horrors would seem even worse by comparison.
  • Brown Note Being: Seeing some creatures in this game lowers your sanity score. Vision triggered sanity loss is a Brown Note power for creatures such as the water-dwelling Kaernk and the Shadow.
  • Cat Scare: The scarcity of it makes those few instances much more effective.
    • Not a cat, but opening a drawer full of bones has the same effect.
    • Also, the iron maiden near the end.
    • There's also the torch that turns on by itself. Which is not traditional fire.
  • Chekhov's Gun: Justified. Some of the flashbacks provide hints as how to how to make progress, although it's more of a Chekhov's Gun to Daniel as the memories slowly comes back to him, since the player wouldn't know anything about these pieces of information until the flashbacks are pointing it out. A straight example for the player would be Daniel's ability to repair Orbs, which comes up in a diary entry early in the game, then becomes relevant near the ending, when Daniel needs to repair Agrippa's broken Orb to breach the Inner Sanctum.
  • Cold-Blooded Torture: How both Daniel and Alexander treat those that Alexander has captured.
  • Collapsing Lair: At the end of the game when you exit the castle, if you look behind you, you can see rocks completely obstructing the way back to the Entrance Hall. Also, you can hear crumble noises while Daniel opens the big door.
  • Collision Damage: The Meat Moss hurts you if you stand on it, though it is possible to jump on and off it fast enough to avoid damage.
  • The Computer Is a Lying Bastard: The hint you get when seeing a monster for the first time states that looking at them for too long causes you to "eventually be seen." This was confirmed by the lead developer to be an outright lie, with the intention of scaring the player into avoiding looking at enemies.
  • Continuing is Painful: On Hard Mode. You still respawn when you die, but you do so at your last manual save instead of at a convenient checkpoint nearby. Making a save also costs five tinderboxes, and given how scarce those are in Hard Mode, and how much more you'll rely on them due to a similar scarcity of lantern oil, there's a good chance that dying will lose you a lot of progress.
  • The Corruption: The Shadow of the Orb.
  • Cosmic Horror Story: If the Universe is kept in balance by a disgusting mass of flesh, that'll relentlessly hunt people down and devour them for touching its precious orbs, that's not a good sign.
  • Cower Power: Literally, the best way to survive a monster is to find a dark corner, curl up with your nose to the wall, and pray it leaves before it stumbles over you. Justified, as Daniel has no means by which to fight back against these monsters, they can generally outrun him when they break into a sprint, and closing doors will only slow them down at best.
  • Creepy Cathedral: The area names of one section of the castle suggests it is this. It doesn't look much like one, but it's hinted that much of it may have been made by members of a forgotten culture.
  • Creepy Painting: There are portraits of Alexander around the castle. If your sanity's high, they look like normal portraits; but if your sanity's low, the paintings become utterly horrific.
  • The Croc Is Ticking: The terror music, which signifies that a monster is chasing you. Apart from being very bad news whenever it happens, the sound itself is terrifying, sounding like someone screaming bloody murder.
  • Darkness Equals Death: Played with — a core strategy for survival is to hide in dark areas from monsters, as they can't see well in the dark. Doing so does reduce your Sanity Meter note , but there is no other way to evade your pursuers. In the end, it amounts to "When darkness doesn't equal safety, it equals madness".
  • Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Dying just sends you to the nearest respawn and you can continue on your merry way. Averted in Hard Mode, as dying instead sends you back to the last time you saved...and with Hard also implementing Save-Game Limits, that could set you back a long way.
  • Delicious Distraction: The water monster can be briefly placated by chucking one of the many severed body parts lying around into the water.
  • Difficulty Levels: An update to the game added Hard Mode, which makes all enemies faster, more likely to spot you, and capable of killing you in one hit. The Musical Spoiler when an enemy spawns is also removed. Autosaving is disabled, and creating a manual save now costs five tinderboxes. Oh, and the overall amount of tinderboxes and oil in the game has been greatly reduced, so both light sources and saves will be scarce. To top it all off, if the Sanity Meter hits bottom, Daniel dies.
  • Dismantled MacGuffin: Daniel will frequently need to find multiple parts of a tool, machine, or object and put them back together in order to proceed. Perhaps the best example is Agrippa's broken Orb — the final fourth of the game revolves around finding the six pieces and reassembling them to counter the magical protections keeping Daniel out of the Inner Sanctum.
  • Doomed by Canon: The written supplementary materials focus on characters who were mentioned in-game as dying or disappearing without a trace. Each story ends right before the event that kills them.
  • Doom Magnet: Everywhere Daniel goes, people die. It turns out it's the Shadow hunting him. By the time the games events begin, he is almost a Walking Wasteland. It is hinted at that it only kills people who examine or tamper with the orb and it does so instantly. Whereas Daniel is fine for 27 days and if Daniel stops Alexander from screwing with the orb, it lets him go without an issue.
  • Down the Drain: There is an awful lot of this, including an invisible monster that devours you if you touch water, just to give all subsequent drain sections that little extra touch of paranoia
  • Dramatic Spotlight: During the Archives bit, there is a (barely) playable flashback from when Daniel first laid hands on an Orb, during the expedition in Algeria. There is a pedestal with the Orb on it, in a circle of light. Everything else is darkness.
  • Easter Egg: See that tiny six-digit code at the bottom of the screen when you finish the game? Get all the endings and write down the codes, because you can use them to unlock the "super secret" .rar file in the game folder, containing Concept Art, design documents, unused audio, and footage of the game's alpha versions.
  • Eldritch Abomination: The Shadow. Daniel aptly describes it as a living nightmare that breaks down reality. All that's really known about it beside this is that it's some kind of force that guards the Orbs and gets very angry at people who try to misuse them, though it seems to be fickle in how exactly it responds to this. Not helping matters it that it's never actually seen despite being a looming threat throughout the game; the only way to perceive it is through the telltale signs of its presence.
  • Evil Is Visceral: The most prominent sign of the Shadow's presence is large, fleshy pustules that appear everywhere and hurt Daniel if he touches them.
  • Evil Mentor: Part of why Daniel finally snaps in the first place and drinks the amnesia potion is because he learns that not all of the Baron's victims are criminals... victims that Daniel has happily tortured in the past.
  • Expository Gameplay Limitation: In several of the flashbacks, the player is limited to only walking or running forwards.
  • Eye Scream: One of the flashbacks in the Torture Cellar contains this... thankfully in text form, but given the limitations on character models, that might be worse.
  • Facial Horror: If the player is caught by a monster, this is likely to be the last thing they see. Also applies to Agrippa, though his friendly attitude tends to undermine the horror after the initial shock wears off. If you look at one of Alexander's portraits while your sanity is low enough, the result also qualifies, but since it's heavily implied that Alexander is actually an alien creature, it could just be his true form.
  • Fan Sequel: The custom story "Abduction" is one. Daniel is on Earth for this one.
    • "Through the Portal" is another. Daniel starts in the alien world and tries to find his way back home.
    • "Gustav" is a fan-made prequel and is set 37 and a half years before Daniel's arrival at Brennenburg.
    • Fleeing Brennenburg is a sequel to the Revenge ending.
  • First-Person Ghost: As in Penumbra. Averted only by your left hand, which visibly holds the lantern.
  • Fission Mailed: Near the end, where Daniel is captured and put into a prison cell. Complete with a special game over message!
  • Flower Motifs: Roses. The "amnesia" potion is made of oil-of-roses, and rose petals appear at key moments when memories start to return to Daniel. And when he goes through the gate.
  • Food Chain of Evil: As you head into the second half of the game, you find the grunt's eviscerated corpse on the floor and are left to the realization that now you get to run from whatever did that.
  • Glamour Failure: Never stated outright, but looking at Alexander's portrait at low sanity is implied to be this — rather than simply an insane hallucination, the player is probably, in fact, seeing his true form.
  • Glass Cannon: The Kaernk, that invisible monster, can tear the player up, but can be killed by simply throwing a box on it. Good luck hitting it, though.
  • Golden Ending: Considered by some fans who invoke Story Branch Favoritism. By tossing Agrippa's severed head into the portal, Agrippa gets through the portal, leaving Daniel and Alexander trapped in the Inner Sanctum. The Shadow kills Alexander and apparently kills Daniel too, but Daniel is drawn through the portal by Agrippa before he truly dies. Agrippa (alive and well due to the potion Daniel gives him) and Weyer both begin to tend to Daniel's wounds. Agrippa tells Daniel "everything will be alright," implying they will bring him back from the brink of death, and give him the potential Immortality they have in their world.
  • Go Mad from the Revelation: The revelation in this case being a Heel Realization. Voluntarily erasing his memories was Daniel's mean of coping with it.
  • Gothic Horror: Dark, decaying, (kinda) haunted castle? Haunted Hero? Mysterious, morally ambiguous, (kinda) vampiric Baron? Madness and curses? Check, check, check, double check.
  • Grey-and-Gray Morality: As the game moves forward, the player will gradually realize the conflict isn't as black-and-white as Daniel's Note to Self would have them believe. There's no denying Alexander has done horrible things without remorse, but he does have a sympathetic motivation (returning home and reuniting with his loved ones) and takes no pleasure in his evil actions, regarding them as nothing more than a necessary means to an end. Meanwhile, Daniel also had sympathetic motivations (he was terrified of the Shadow and wanted protection from it) and was manipulated by Alexander, but over time, he grew to enjoy torturing people, to the point where even Alexander was shocked by his actions. The events of the game happen entirely because he had a Heel Realization and couldn't live with the guilt of what he'd done, choosing to erase his memory so he could pursue revenge without it hindering him.
  • Have a Nice Death: When you die, the game will give you helpful advice such as, "Tread carefully..." and, "Block the path. Run..."
    "Stay out of the water..."
  • Haunted Castle: The Shadow, a formless, unseen entity, frequently makes its presence felt with loud roaring sounds, shaking, and leaving fleshy residue in its wake. Turns out that's because of Daniel.
  • Hazardous Water: The archives under the castle are all flooded knee or waist deep. Unfortunately for Daniel, that is the only environment in which invisible, flesh-hungry monsters from another dimension can survive...
  • Heel Realization: Daniel, once he finds the final Diary entry — the player will realize it beforehand, though.
  • Heroic Sacrifice: Daniel in the Agrippa ending. Arguably doubles as Redemption Equals Death.
  • Hollywood Acid: At one point you have to mix cuprite, calamine, aqua regia, and orpiment to make an acid and use it to dissolve a large growth blocking your progress. While aqua regia (a mix of nitric acid and hydrochloric acid that can dissolve metals like gold) and orpiment (an arsenic sulfide used in tanning) make sense and could probably do the job by themselves, it makes little sense to mix them together with a non corrosive mineral like cuprite and calamin, a substance used as the basis of LOTION.
  • Hollywood Darkness: Zig-zagged. Standing in a lit hallway and looking into a dark room will allow the player to see absolutely nothing inside the room; however, if Daniel is in the dark, there is usually faint bluish ambient light that allows the player to move around without using the lantern (though sanity will still drain). Some areas, however, are completely black, with no ambient light at all, and are explicitly described as being unnaturally dark. These areas are also often full of monsters or other horrors.
  • Horrifying the Horror: In one of the loading screens and in one of his memory jars, Alexander expresses stupefaction at how changed Daniel has become — ironically, under the guidance of Alexander himself, who successfully turned his friend into a Torture Technician.
  • Hub Under Attack: The game has multiple Hub Levels that the hostile monsters lurking within Brennenburg cannot enter, alowing the player to rest before tackling the castle's many horrors. As you complete the levels within those hubs, however, the latter will gradually sport anomalies such as blood-poring fountains and Meat Moss — the calling card of the Shadow pursuing Daniel. Downplayed, however, in that the player can still be safe in the hubs regardless.
  • Humanoid Abomination: Baron Alexander, possibly.
  • Human Resources: Humans are tortured and killed to collect Vitae.
  • Hyperspace Arsenal: You can carry a lantern, lantern oil, other important items and Agrippa's head, without much lack of space in your inventory.
  • Identity Amnesia: Done via a Laser-Guided Amnesia potion which wipes Daniel's memory about himself — thankfully he still knows how to use tinderboxes and refuel his oil lamp!
  • I'm Cold... So Cold...: At a certain spot you'll hear this phrase as a disembodied whisper.
  • Immortality Immorality: It's strongly indicated that the Baron, being stuck in human form, needs vitae (cosmic life force) to prolong his life until he can find a way back to his own dimension. Unfortunately, the only viable source of sufficient quantities of vitae is the prolonged torture and agony of human beings. Daniel, likewise, needs to regularly perform human sacrifices to keep the Shadow at bay.
  • Interface Screw: As your sanity decreases, the screen distorts, as if you're looking through a thin layer of water. At really low levels, Daniel's movements lag behind your mouse movements.
  • Interface Spoiler: Early on, a helpful hint appears instructing you to hide in darkness from enemies...even if you had no idea anything was there. Subverted, as there isn't really anything there the first time the hint appears; it's just the game trying to make you paranoid. The hint will repeat during the first real encounter with a monster, though you'd still have to actively try to be spotted by it before it despawns and might not even see it due to how far away it is. However, it's played straight the first time you see a hint about hiding in cupboards.
  • Invincible Boogeymen: Almost every monster in the game is one of these, but they do give up and go away if the player hides themselves well enough. Just looking at them is enough to drive the player character mad, and as soon as one catches sight of you, you're practically dead. However, the most prominent example is the Shadow, as unlike other monsters which you can hide from or distract, the Shadow will find you wherever you go and is truly unstoppable. It will NEVER stop chasing you until it decides otherwise.
    • Normal Fish in a Tiny Pond: If Rebirth is anything to go by, creatures like Alexander's Gatherers are stronger than humans, but just as vulnerable to bullets as anyone else. It's just that Daniel doesn't have access to anything even remotely resembling an effective weapon.
  • Ironic Echo: Fail to escape the cage filling with Meat Moss and you hear echoes of other Brennenburg prisoners pleading for mercy. Their fate is now yours!
  • Iron Maiden: An iron maiden is included in a late part of Brennenburg Castle. Coming close to it triggers a (hallucinated) Jump Scare when it opens. Using it when you're next to the thing triggers a kind of flashback through the memories of one of its victims.
  • It Gets Easier: Daniel is initially squeamish and disturbed by the idea of torturing anyone, even someone he's told is a remorseless criminal. As time wears on, however, his standards start to slip, until by the end he's fine with kidnapping a completely innocent family with the intent of torturing them to death.
  • Jump Scare: Used sparingly, but to even better effect for it. Such scares include a wind extinguishing a set of torches, or a desk that opens to a set of human skulls. Unlike traditional jump scares, they can inflict sanity damage. There is a nasty one where you reach an iron maiden and when you get too close, it will suddenly open revealing a red mist.
  • Just One More Level!: A design decision. The game's levels were designed to be short and bite-sized to provoke this effect.
  • Large Ham: The guy they got to voice The Baron seems to be really into it. Some of his line readings border on mood breaking, especially a couple at the very beginning of the game, most notably the first time he says "The Inner Sanctum".
    "...in fact, it lies beneath the very stone of Brennenburg!"
  • Leitmotif: Each character has their own associated piece of theme music. Each piece has several variations to represent different moods. Most commonly this can be heard while reading notes written by various characters. Specific songs also "give away" when a monster is lurking around, and of course, the screech when a monster is actively chasing you.
  • Lightning Bruiser: The Brutes. They run faster than Daniel and can kill him in one hit.
  • Karma Houdini: Either Daniel or Alexander, depending on the ending. Two endings, including the Non-Standard Game Over, have Daniel consumed by the Shadow while Alexander presumably gets away. Another one has the Shadow consume Alexander while Daniel lives, though this can also be interpreted as the entire game serving as Daniel's Laser-Guided Karma, with his success at stopping Alexander despite everything redeeming him.
  • Madness Mantra
    Daniel: Paint the man, cut the lines. Cut the flesh, watch the blood spill — let it come!
  • Male Frontal Nudity: This game is not at all shy about full frontal male nudity, and the final confrontation might remind you more than a little of Watchmen.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Agrippa points out that Daniel shares the same name as the Biblical figure and he compares Daniel's quest with the story of Daniel In The Lion's Den.
    • Brennenburg roughly translates to "Burning Castle" in German. The castle was burned by a fire before the events of the game take place and was rebuilt by Alexander.
  • Meat Moss: All over the place, and more growing all the time. It is strongly implied this is a residual effect of the Shadow that is pursuing Daniel.
  • Memory Jar: The game has a few unexplained cylinders of Alexander's (each containing a single vague memory) scattered throughout the castle.
  • Misplaced Wildlife: The cockroaches infesting Alexander's castle look and sound like Gromphadorhina portentosa (Madagascar hissing cockroach), rather out of place in a castle somewhere in Prussia. Given that they only appear when Daniel's sanity is low, they may just be hallucinations.
  • Monster Delay: The game runs on this trope, using its atmosphere and a good dose of Nothing Is Scarier to wind the player up to the point where they're likely to be a jumpy, nervous wreck long before anything truly dangerous happens. Case in point: the first glimpse you'll see of a monster is a silhouette in a dark hallway. It isn't dangerous, disappears immediately, and won't reappear again, but by this point you're likely to be far too paranoid to figure that out. When the monsters start showing up for real later on, your sanity will drain just by looking at them, making you more likely to be spotted and killed, which strongly discourages trying to get a better look. Unfortunately, the marketing department didn't get this memo and put one of the monsters right on the front cover.
  • Motivational Lie: Some of the tips in tutorial messages and loading screens outright lie to the player. For example, you're told early on that having low sanity makes it easier for monsters to spot you, but in reality there's no connection whatsoever between the Sanity Meter and monsters spawning or their chance of seeing Daniel. It does its job of making players terrified of spending too long in the dark, though.
  • Multiple Endings: Four total: two Bittersweet (one of which overlaps with Golden Ending) and two DownerEndings, one of which is a Non-Standard Game Over.
    • If you break Alexander's machine before it opens the portal, Alexander dies and Daniel leaves Brennenburg free of his curse and content that he did the right thing.
    • If you let the portal open and didn't help Agrippa, Alexander will go through the portal and the darkness will kill you.
    • If you let the portal open and throw Agrippa's head through it, both you and Alexander will die, but Agrippa will call out to you in the ethereal realm and ask Weyer to help you, before assuring you "it will be alright."
    • There is also a fourth, lesser known ending only possible if the player decides to remain in the cell after the three Grunts attack him in the Chancel. This ending is similar to the 'bad' ending, in that it means Alexander will go through the portal and Daniel will be consumed by the shadow.
  • Musical Spoiler: You can easily tell if the enemies are nearby or chasing you, as both have specific musical tracks that cue up the moment a monster spawns or you're spotted. Subverted when hiding from a monster, however; if a monster spawns and you hide from it, the hunting music will keep playing until you work up the nerve to go check if it's gone.
  • My God, What Have I Done?: Daniel, detailed in a note found late in the game.
  • Mythology Gag: In the intro, you get a throwaway reference from Daniel about him living in Mayfair, London. That's the same place where the protagonist of the Penumbra series goes to retrieve the heirloom of his missing father (which kicks off the plot of the first game).
    • Also, the "memory capsules" are very similar to the Tuurngait artifacts in Penumbra.
  • Nightmare Face: The Facial Horror of the monsters is one major source of this. The other source is the paintings of Alexander when viewed Through the Eyes of Madness.
  • No Escape but Down: Played on throughout the whole game. While Daniel has to go up some stairs and ladders at times, he cannot escape the castle until he "descends into the darkness" following one of the very first instructions the player is given, all the while fleeing from various opponents. Taken most literally towards the end of the game when Daniel has finally gained access to the Inner Sanctum by recreating an orb, and he must run down stairs with the Shadow hot on his heels.
  • Non-Standard Game Over: If you fail to escape the jail cell and let the shadow consume you, you will trigger the Downer Ending. It is very similar to the bad ending towards the end of the game.
  • Note to Self: Daniel writes himself a note before quaffing a potion to erase his memories, telling him to descend to the bottom of Brenenburg Castle and kill a man. This is found at the end of the first area.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: In spades. The monsters are scarce enough to keep them from being a source of frustration, but frequent enough to ramp up the terror. Add to that ambient sounds that, at times, sound like footsteps, and you'll be cowering in a corner for fear of a monster you haven't even seen yet — or may not even be there in the first place. The game doesn't even let you get a good look at the monsters, ever, because just looking at them drops your sanity meter and causes the screen to blur... and makes them notice you.
    • The splashing water scene. A lot of players claim the scene nearly gave them a heart attack.
    • One of the measurements of your low sanity is simply "..."
    • The Kaernk (water monster) in particular runs on this; all you ever see of it are the splashes it makes as it chases after you.
    • Likewise, you never see the Shadow itself, only obvious signs that it's in the area and you should be running, now.
  • Offscreen Teleportation: The monsters are capable of this.
  • Ontological Mystery: The beginning of the game. After you struggle through a few corridors and staircases, you find your notes and learn a bit more about who you seemingly are and what you supposed to do after willingly inducing amnesia on yourself.
  • Our Vampires Are Different: They are extra-dimensional travelers who became trapped in our dimension, and consume Life Energy in blood in order to extend their life long enough to find a way home. Said Life Energy can only be infused in the blood through pain and horror, hence the kidnapping and torture.
  • Pay Evil unto Evil: Bloodcurdlingly subverted. Alexander convinces Daniel to learn and practice the art of torture on innumerable victims by claiming repeatedly that, as Daniel himself puts it in a diary entry, "they are all wicked men." The Baron manages his training so well, Daniel all too naturally invokes God to justify his crimes and resorts to Dehumanization, calling the prisoners "monsters" at one point.
  • Potion-Brewing Mechanic: You make an acidic potion out of Calamine, Orpiment, Cuprite and Aqua Regia.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: Vitae, a substance containing the cosmic lifeforce Baron Alexander needs for his alchemy, can only be obtained through the prolonged torture and suffering of human beings. This, more than anything else, is why Castle Brennenburg is such a gallery of horrors. The reason the amnesia potion was made was to ensure the torture victims wouldn't grow conditioned and numb to their suffering, thus producing less vitae, and could successfully keep producing the stuff until/unless they actually died.
    Baron Alexander: As long as the body suffers, it will continue to produce the vitae and saturate the blood with its properties.
  • Primal Fear: Plays heavily on several of these. Fear of the dark is, as the title suggests, a frequent one, but that is also subserviant to a more general fear of the unknown. The game uses lots of little tricks to ensure this fear is invoked, such as noises to suggest what might be near, and Teleporting Key Card Squad to ensure that monsters can be anywhere, and Nothing Is Scarier to keep players tense and on-edge. Even if one tries looking at the monsters (Body Horrors though they are) Daniel's vision will be blurred and distorted, ensuring that they retain an element of mystery and unknowability, in addition to their role as predators after helpless prey.
  • Psychological Horror: The backbone of the whole game, even more than in its predecessor Penumbra.
  • "Psycho" Strings: The music that plays when a monster is chasing you, fittingly called the "Terror Meter", consists of a screechy, high-pitched string instrument note that sounds chillingly like a drawn-out scream (which is what you're likely to be doing, too).
  • Quest for Identity: The reason you'll want to pick up the Diary entries.
  • "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Delivered by Alexander when you reach the second half of the torture chambers.
  • Redemption Equals Death: In one of the endings. Daniel can send Agrippa's head through the portal, at the cost of being devoured by the Shadow along with Alexander, sacrificing his own chance at survival to finally reunite Agrippa with Weyer. Downplayed, as it's implied Agrippa and Weyer will rescue him from the Shadow's clutches.
  • Redemption Quest: Not revealed until the final Journal entry, but strongly hinted at prior.
  • The Reveal: Why Daniel is in the castle, of course! It wouldn't have the amnesia factor without a reveal as to how he got there, after all.
  • Roaring Rampage of Revenge: Became Daniel's motivation to kill Alexander for manipulating him into torturing and killing innocent people all the while never intending to protect him from the Shadow in the first place.
  • Run or Die: Your only two choices when a monster spots you.
  • Sanity Meter: Daniel's nyctophobia and monster-phobia means that he starts losing it if he looks at monsters or stays in the darkness too long. On the status screen, his mental state ranges from "Crystal Clear" down through headaches and shaky hands to simply "...". As sanity drops lower, Daniel's vision starts to distort and he becomes increasingly affected by unnerving visual and auditory hallucinations. The only way to restore sanity is to stand in the light for a long time or complete puzzles. The latter will announce that Daniel has regained sanity with a flash of blue light and the sound of a relieved sigh. If the meter drops to zero, Daniel will collapse and be unable to move for a few seconds, and any monsters in the area will be alerted to his presence. If Daniel runs out of sanity on Hard Mode, he outright dies.
  • Save-Game Limits: Zig-zagged. You can save at any time in normal mode, though the game is generous enough with autosaves that you likely won't bother. On Hard Mode, however, autosaving is disabled and making a save costs five scarce and precious tinderboxes, forcing the player to think long and hard about whether making a save is worth it.
  • Scenery Gorn: The decaying ruins of Brennenburg. It progressively gets worse once the Shadow starts taking over.
    • The torture chambers and the Choir.
  • Schmuck Bait: Go ahead and hop inside the Iron Maiden in one of the torture rooms. See what happens.
    • Try lighting a fire under the Brazen Bull in the Choir. You won't get hurt, but your sanity will take a nasty hit. And the Choir is the absolute worst place to have low sanity.
  • Shout-Out: Daniel's backstory, wherein he loses his memories of a large portion of his life and is involved in exploring an ancient set of ruins hidden under a vast desert which contain Alien Geometry, is reminiscent of the H. P. Lovecraft story "The Shadow Out of Time".
  • Shut Up, Hannibal!: Possible in two of three endings.
  • Smash to Black: When you enter the Cellar Archives, you will hear the Shadow's roar and it will suddenly go black as the protagonist is knocked unconscious. When he wakes up, he discovers that the corridor is all flooded and there is something in the water that is after him...
  • Spooky Painting: Toyed with — as your Sanity Meter depletes, portraits of an old man become grotesque to look at. It's a portrait of Alexander, by the way. It may be what he really looks like.
  • Stealth-Based Game: You don't even have a weapon to fight back.
  • Story Breadcrumbs: Diary entries, miscellaneous documents, and the occasional flashback.
  • Strong as They Need to Be: Most of the terror of the game comes from the fact that you're playing as a regular human who lacks any skill or ability that would allow him to fight back against the creatures stalking him. This is somewhat undermined by the fact that Daniel seems to be crazy strong, judging by various puzzle sequences in which he busts open stone walls with a shovel or smashes through foot-thick wood pillars with his bare hands. He also has no problem picking up and throwing large rocks and boulders (some bigger than he is) — but struggles to open a perfectly normal wooden trapdoor. Perhaps it's made out of plot, well-known for its resistance to even the most panic-boosted strength.
    • Also discussed in-game in one of the notes. Given what Daniel's facing, it's not surprising he can pull it off from time-to-time.
      Baron Alexander: Even the most timid creature can break out in fits of violence where their strength exceeds their expected prowess.
    • It also bears mentioning that, in those particular instances, the wall or floor has already been weakened to the point of the mortar being loose enough for it to happen.
  • Sympathetic Murder Backstory: Daniel is manipulated by Alexander into sacrificing what he thought were criminals. He is devastated after he was forced to kill a little girl, and nearly loses his sanity. He vows revenge on Alexander for that. Amongst the flashbacks in-game involve the cries of the lives he took (children's voices were amongst them).
  • Tactical Door Use: Doors will not stop monsters, but they will slow them down, requiring several Barrier Busting Blows to batter down before they can enter. This is essential in some scenarios for buying Daniel extra time to put distance between himself and the threat or finding a better place to hide.
  • Taking You with Me: Before quaffing the amnesia potion, Daniel has no illusions that he is ever going to escape the Shadow, but he has every intention of making sure Alexander doesn't either.
  • Technicolor Science: The acid is bright, glowing green. Even without a heat source, it boils dramatically to the point of hurling out glass bottles dropped in it.
  • Teleporting Keycard Squad: Unfortunately played straight some of the time: generally, when there's a puzzle-relevant object in plain sight, you can bet that a monster is going to spawn two rooms back to terrorize you after you pick it up. Of course, knowing this makes it even more tense, because you'll be afraid to even find the solutions because you know they could cause a monster to spawn.
    • To quote Yahtzee again: "It's like they're being summoned by the autosave function."
  • Through the Eyes of Madness: The paintings, especially the portrait of Baron Alexander, change as your sanity gets lower. Although, given that he is explicitly stated to be from a different world, this might actually be a somewhat bizarre case of Glamour Failure.
  • Throwing the Distraction: Enemies react to sound, so this is a good strategy to get them to wander in the direction you want. It's also entirely necessary to pass one particular enemy.
  • Title Drop: A note discovered late in the game indicates that the elixir Daniel drank just before the game begins (which he reads a Note to Self about in the first level) is actually titled "Amnesia", because it causes exactly what it says. The real purpose of it is to erase the memories of torture victims, so that they forget the specifics of the torture, and leave them to only wonder what caused their scars, their minds constructing fresh horrors anew in anticipation of the next session.
    • While not word-for-word, there is a subtitle drop in Daniel's note to self in the beginning of the game ordering him to "descend into the darkness" and kill Alexander.
  • Torture Cellar: Brass bulls that people are crammed into to be broiled alive, torture wheels that allow for multiple bone breaks, and cells that permit the neighbor to hear nothing but the anguished screams emitting from the torture chambers. Even worse is the reason behind the torturing. See Powered by a Forsaken Child.
    • Almost all of those items are real medieval torture devices that actually existed and were used on people, with the exception of the Iron Maiden, which (despite its many appearances throughout popular culture and inside some historical "tours") is purely fictional as a means of torture.
  • Torture Technician:
    • Alexander, judging by his notes on the subject. He leaves instructions on how to best inflict prolonged suffering, and deliberately pipes the sound of ongoing torture into the cell areas of the other prisoner awaiting their turn, knowing that the anticipation will only make it worse for them. For all the elaborate devices in the castle, the torture techniques are very primitive, dating back to the Dark Ages. Possibly justified because Alexander is immortal and has been alive for much longer than the era in which the game takes place. However, his torture technique is further backed up by the use a memory-erasing draught called "Amnesia" after each session, just so their imaginations will produce new horrors afresh in anticipation of next time.
    • Daniel, too, becomes an apprentice of sorts to Alexander as he revels in torturing supposed murderers, arsonists, and rapists.
    • The Developer Commentary points out that the techniques laid out by Alexander are quite similar to the techniques they use to keep the player on edge throughout the experience, making the devs themselves Torture Technicians. Parallel to how the prisoners have to hear their cellmates torture and death, the player is also subjected to auditory hallucinations featuring each of the torture apparatus and their effects before we see them and how they function.
  • Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Subverted. Daniel induces amnesia on himself willingly, by drinking a certain type of potion. The game starts at the point when he wakes up from his dreamless sleep, now only knowing his name and nothing else.
  • Überwald: The Prussian woodlands that surround Castle Brennenburg, including the tiny village of Altstadt just down the road. Most of the information on it is revealed through diary entries, notes on the location, and supplemental materials.
  • Unbroken First-Person Perspective: The entire game is played from Daniel's perspective.
  • Uncanny Valley: Deliberately invoked with the Grunt; in what looks like a pale, drooping corpse, there's a jaw that looks like it was designed by Salvador Dali.
  • Walking Wasteland: Anyone who examines or tampers with the orb is killed by the shadow. Daniel, unwittingly, gets several people killed this way. He never makes the connection that the Shadow who murders certain people and does so instantly (whereas Daniel wants nothing to do with the orb and the Shadow lets him live for a long time and lets him go in one ending), so he panics and runs to Alexander... Which leads to many, many more deaths.
  • Was Once a Man: The creatures hunting Daniel were once soldiers working under Alexander; after giving them tainted wine, Body Horror ensued, causing them to explode and become horribly misshapen.
  • Well-Intentioned Extremist: What Alexander tries to paint himself as, claiming the ends justify his means of returning to his people in another dimension, and tries to give Daniel a "Not So Different" Remark.

     Tropes in Justine 
  • Checkpoint Starvation: The Justine DLC lasts only a couple of hours but you cannot save anywhere, unlike the main game where you could. This is a problem, because the player character is a One-Hit-Point Wonder and there are three terrifying and dangerous puzzles you have to survive.
  • Country Matters: Basile calls Justine a "cunt" at one point.
  • Cutting the Knot: All the rooms are easily passable by killing the prisoners instead of saving them.
  • Easter Egg: There is a letter from "A.S Laboratories" hidden behind some books on a bookshelf in one of the rooms that mentions a Space-Span Device. A.S Laboratories is the same Aperture Science from the Portal series and the Space-Span device is the portal gun. If you find the letter, at the end in the final room, the body covered in chains and tied to the ceiling is a direct Shout-Out to GLaDOS, and the dialogue between Justine and Clarice changes: Justine requests that Clarice post a letter to the mysterious A.S Laboratories to let them know that she is "still alive". The entire set up of the game acts as a Shout-Out to Portal.
  • Even Evil Has Loved Ones: Implied with Justine and Clarice, at least once upon a time. A paper indicates that Justine actually cared enough about Clarice to comfort her when she cried, although it seems that Clarice was actually forbidden from playing with her. Clarice has apparently grown up to be Justine's servant, and she herself seems to be on good terms with Justine, though utterly oblivious to her employer's "games".
  • Evil Is Easy: Killing the three men is easier than solving the puzzles required to save them. On the other hand, you have to save them in order to get 100% Completion... And the potato.
  • Eye Scream: A phonograph has some of this. It's also fully voice acted.
    • And the result of this? That monster trying to kill you.
  • Fission Mailed: When you try to find a way to escape the closing walls, you are unable to escape and it seems as though it is game over. Luckily, it turns out to just be a test.
  • French Jerk: Justine, obviously. Basile qualifies too, although he's understandably mad at Justine for what she did to him.
  • Gratuitous French: Every character who speaks.
  • Hidden Purpose Test: Averted. Justine tells the Player Character that she is in Justine's dungeon at the beginning for Justine's entertainment and to test whether humans will take the easy, selfish way out of a problem or look for a harder way out that does not hurt others. The secret part is that Justine is testing herself.
  • Male Frontal Nudity: The Suitors are all fully nude, and their genitalia are clearly visible. Given the context, Fan Disservice is the clear intent.
  • Manipulative Bitch: Justine. She succeeded in getting all three suitors into the chambers, all physically and psychologically tortured, mostly by words and manipulation. It's stated that the reason Malo is insane was because she tried to completely break him long before she began to physically torture him. And she did this all only for her own, twisted, selfish amusement. No wonder the suitors want to kill her!
  • Meaningful Name: Justine's name (Justine Florbelle) is a reference to two works by the Marquis de Sade, Justine and Les Journees de Florbelle. The subtitle of Justine is "The Misfortunes of Virtue" which may apply to the ending, if you get the good ending. Les Journees de Florbelle was destroyed, perhaps reflecting the bad ending and the fact that you can't save the game — if you die, you are destroyed forever and cannot be recovered. The horrifying content of these novels is reflected in the game and the character.
  • Murder by Inaction: The titular character is presented with the option of doing this three times.
  • Nintendo Hard: Getting hit once by a suitor results in instant kill, and you'll have to start over again.
  • Nothing Is Scarier: Justine doesn't quite follow this... to an extent. There is only one type of monster, the 3 suitors (Justine's former fiancee Alois, and yes, he's still alive and human, a guy named Basile whom Justine blinded and who calls you profane names, and Malo, who wants to eat you), you encounter each one once throughout the expansion, and while looking at Basile drops your sanity, it doesn't always make him more likely to see you... because he's blind. However, he can hear you, and if any of them hits you once, you die, and the game closes, not to mention there are no save points in the expansion whatsoever.
  • One-Hit Kill: One hit from a suitor and you're dead. The worst part about this is that there are no save points. You're back at the start of the game.
  • Parental Incest: Of the father/daughter variety. An excerpt from Justine's diary heavily implies that her father is molesting her, claiming he's trying to "fill the void" her mother left. For added squickyness, the entry is from when Justine was 11 years old.
  • Room Full of Crazy: "The tattered yellow king shall dethrone", "Climb the highest tower, "Oh Father", "The skinless one is waking", "The inside", "Gluttony", "I am emerging", "The beautiful pain", "Lonely", "Through the gates", "It will be the end of everything","What will that perfect sphere bring", "It will be again, It's coming", "From within", "Playful", "Death shall move across the floor", "Spin the wheels crank the engine", "My darlings", "Liar! Alois does to use dust as a sore muse", and who could forget "Suffer the trial" and "Stay alive".
  • Screw the Rules, I Have Money!: Justine claims that laws were "made for cretins" and that the aristocracy doesn't need to know right from wrong because "we are always right".
  • Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Even if you save the hostages, at the end Justine just locks them up in the basement to either starve to death, or to be used again in a later "game".
  • Shout-Out: Justine has several coy references to Portal, especially towards the end, and a reference to Robert E. Chambers's The King in Yellow.
  • Trial-and-Error Gameplay: There are no checkpoints, you're a One-Hit-Point Wonder, and there is a monster that will kill you if it spots you. Combine this with the puzzles and you'll be restarting numerous times.
  • Video Game Cruelty Potential: The entire game builds on this; you're set up in a series of rooms which each contain one victim you can either kill or save. Killing them makes it easier to make progress, while sparing them takes more effort. Depending on how many people you spared (or not at all), determines which ending you'll get.
  • The Walls Are Closing In: The final challenge room, the player must overcome this. The exposed gears on the wall and various dodads scattered about the floor to jam into them are red herrings to give the player a Hope Spot, though Failure Is the Only Option. There is no way to stop the walls from closing... until they stop on their own.
  • Was Once a Man: Justine is terrible about this, because we learn that the monsters stalking the protagonist are still alive, and very much human thanks to Justine. No wonder they want to kill her.
  • Whole-Plot Reference: A psychotic woman forces a seemingly mute woman to run through a series of death traps while making clever remarks.
    • For good reason, too — the DLC was part of the "Potato Sack" Alternate Reality Game carried on through several indie games, leading up to Portal 2. The backstory for the ARG explains that GLaDOS hijacked all of the games, adding in references to potatoes and so on, and unlocking hints in one game would lead to certain tasks in another in the Sack, all which would unlock clues and actually managed to knock the release time of Portal 2 down by several hours, all by fan cooperation.
  • Wham Episode: The entire Twist Ending. Justine willingly created the monsters from her own friends and lover. The entire story was all a sick "game" she plays purely for her own twisted amusement. And depending on what you did in the final areas, she now has the resources to do it all again.
  • You Bastard!: Go ahead, kill all the prisoners. It will make it easier for you to continue, but that shows how much you put your own life above others.

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