amnesia-the-dark-descent posts

We were wondering what was going on at Valve this week when it didn't have any major sales on the Steam download service but late today Steam finally showed its hand. The service has cut the price of 13 indie games under the new Potato Sack bundle.

This new bundle has the following games on sale for 50 percent off their already low prices:

1... 2... 3... KICK IT!
AaAaAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity
Amnesia: The Dark Descent
AudioSurf
BIT.TRIP BEAT
Cogs
Defense Grid: The Awakening
Killing Floor
RUSH
Super Meat Boy
The Ball
The Wonderful End of the World
Toki Tori

If you buy all 13 games at once you will be able to get them all for just $38.72, a 75 percent price cut from their normal prices if sold separately. There's no word on when this sale will end.

As expected the sandbox game hit Minecraft and the first person adventure game Amnesia The Dark Decent were the big winners in the 2011 Independent Games Festival awards ceremony during GDC 2011 on Wednesday. Minecraft took the big Seumas McNally Grand Prize worth $20,000 as well as the $2,000 Audience Award according to Game Informer.

Amnesia The Dark Decent won in three catagories including Technical Excellence, Excellence in Audio and the Direct2Drive-sponsored Vision award. Other winners included Bit.Trip Runner for Excellence in Visual Arts, Desktop Dungeons for Excellent in Design, Nidhogg with the Nuovo Award and Fract for Best Student Game.

While the Independent Games Festival has already announced most of the the nominees for the 2011 awards, the folks at the PC game download site Direct2Drive have now announced the nominees for this year's Vision Award. The five games were picked from the finalists of this year's IGF listed games and are competing for a $10,000 prize among other awards.

The five games nominated this year are:
Flotilla - Blendo Games
Confetti Carnival - SpikySnail Games
Hazard: The Journey for Life - Alexander Bruce's Demruth
NightSky - Nicalis
Amnesia: The Dark Descent - Frictional Games

Meanwhile there's still time for people to vote for their favorite game in the IGF's Audience Awards. Votes will be taken until midnight Pacific time on February 18.

It's not really game related but how cool is it that "The Rock" showed up on Monday Night Raw last night? Ah, we are so old.

• Steam has a new automatic update available for the beta of Counter-Strike Source.
• Minecraft's creator Marcus "Notch" Persson is back from a two week vacation and is working on more updates.
• THQ will release a retail boxed version of Frictional Games' Amnesia The Dark Descent to US stores next week.
• As promised the open beta for the upcoming MMO Rift has started and will last until February 21.
• AMD has released the 11.2 driver updates for its Radeon graphics cards.
• There's going to be a Plants Vs Zombies board game in fall 2011.

What do you get when you combine an acclaimed sandbox indie game with an equally acclaimed indie first person horror adventure title? You get a YouTube video that shows the efforts of a person who has recreated part of Frictional Games' Amnesia The Dark Descent in Minecraft, that's what.

The creator of this indie crossover, "GamerDuality", narrates the video and describes some of the decisions he made in making the recreation of the first couple of rooms in Amnesia. He admits some of the level's failings (he could have used a third party texture pack, for example, to better replicate the game's art style) but overall it looks pretty good.

So what other Minecraft game crossovers can we expect? Quite frankly we are surprised that someone hasn't done Doom in Minecraft or at least we haven't heard of one yet.

Developer Frictional Games has been more than open on the sales of its acclaimed horror adventure game Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Today in a new blog post the developer revealed that sales of the game since its release last September have now gone over the 200,000 unit mark.

While over half of those units sold have been made via discounted prices like sales on Steam and other outlets, the blog post states, "we are in incredible good financial situation right now." The development team also thinking about sticking to the PC platform, perhaps exclusively, saying, "Based on what we have seen, the online PC market is just getting bigger and bigger, and we are convinced we are far from the end of this growth."

The blog post also hints about Frictional's next game, saying, "We aim to use the emotions that Amnesia was able to provoke and to focus them in a different direction, which will hopefully give delightfully disturbing results.." Because of their current financial stability the dev team may take some risks with its next title, saying, "While we of course do not aim to go crazy, it means that we can try out new things without risk of going bankrupt."

The finalists for the 2011 Independent Games Festival have been announced and fans of two of 2010's most acclaimed and popular indie games, the sandbox title Minecraft and the horror adventure game Amnesia The Dark Descent, have a lot to celebrate. Both games received three nominations each including one for the $20,000 Seumas McNally Grand Prize.

The action-RPG Bastion, which hasn't even been released yet, also scored two nominations for the 2011 IGF awards. The full list of catagories and nominated games can be seen after the jump. The winners will be revealed in a ceremony during the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco on March 2.

You now have less that 24 hours before the third annual Steam holiday sale ends. That means you will have less than a day to take advantage of the price cuts that are available on nearly all PC games on the service. It also means that you have until 1 pm Eastern time until these extra-special price cuts (all repeats of previous one-day sales) expire:

Neverwinter Nights 2 Platinum - $9.99
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl/Call of Pripyat bundle - $4.99
Left 4 Dead 2 - $6.80
Grand Theft Auto IV + Episodes from Liberty City - $9.99
Empire/Napoleon Total War Game of the Year Edition - $24.99
The Hitman Collection - $7.49 for three-game bundle (Hitman: Codename 47, Hitman 2: Silent Assassin, Hitman Blood Money)
Mafia 2 - $12.49
Dead Space - $6.80
Plants Vs Zombies Game of the Year Edition - $3.99
Amnesia The Dark Descent - $6.80
Need For Speed Hot Pursuit - $29.99
Killing Floor Complete Pack - $4.99

2010 was a stellar year for indie gaming. We didn't think that 2009 could be beat, but this year really brought out all the stops. From classical platformers like Super Meat Boy to disturbing adventure games like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, there was an aboslute flood of excellent indie games this year. From paid to free, players who wanted to try something a little different had a huge selection of titles to choose from in 2010. Here's our favorite picks from 2010 to roll in the new year! Click on the image to check out our gallery feature.

The Steam PC game download site continues to willingly give out some huge one-day price cuts on top of the sales that are already in place as part of its annual holiday sales event. Here's the latest list of games with price cuts that will last until 1 pm Eastern time on Thursday:

Dead Space - $6.80
Plants Vs Zombies Game of the Year Edition - $4
Swords and Soldiers - $2.50
Kane and Lynch 2 - $4.99
Brothers In Arms series - Save 50 percent off all games in series
Hearts of Iron III Complete Pack (game plus all DLC) - $14.10
City of Heroes Going Rogue Complete Collection - $10
Greed Corp - $2.50
The Quake Collection (all games in series except Quake IV and Enemy Territory: Quake Wars) - $10.20
Sniper Ghost Warrior - $7.50
The Ball - $4.99
Amnesia The Dark Descent - $6.80 or $4.80 if you own any game in the Penumbra series.