You Tell Me | A Machine for Friday the 13th

I'm not a particularly superstitious person, so the fact that it's Friday the 13th fails to inspire feelings of fear in me. That said, with the most monstrous month almost upon us, I've been reading a raft of horror novels for review in recent weeks, and I find myself drawn, quite despite myself, to terror.

I love fantasy for its epic quests, and science fiction for its breathtaking sense of scale, but it strikes me that there's nothing quite like the desperate uncertainty that the very best scary stories suggest. The exquisite thrill of the shiver or the sudden shock of something startling affects me, at least, in a much more immediate way than the slow burn of some secondary world's wonders.

Which is simply to say, I know how I'll be spending my evening: tentatively investigating the terrifying spaces of Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs. 

If it can even hold a candle to its terrifying predecessor — and coming as it does from the developers of the tremendously affecting Dear Esther, I have high hopes — I can't imagine I'll get a whole lot of sleep this weekend.

Will you be spending Friday the 13th with something unspeakably creepy?

Trailer Trash | A Machine For Pigs, Plus One

It looks like the scariest game I've ever played could soon be superseded.

Further to Friday's review of Amnesia: The Dark Descent, a reasonably meaty teaser for the long-awaited sequel just hit. Here it is, in all its ghastly glory:

I suppose slaughterhouses are somewhat Silent Hillish, but it's been so long since that series lived up to my expectations that I don't mind the repetition one whit. In fact, this seems to me a much more portentous locale than the haunted mansion of The Dark Descent, and in my heart I'm glad that the developers aren't simply doing it over.

Tell you what, though: the sequence in the trailer there where the player character is desperately attempting to hide from a horrible monster, flicking his lantern on and off all the while to conserve precious fuel and losing his mind in the process? That gets to the heart of the essential experience of Amnesia.

And glutton for punishment that I am, that's a feeling I'm ready to repeat.

Co-created by Frictional Games and thechineseroom, the visionaries behind this year's Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs is coming in early 2013 — possibly as promptly as January... though I wouldn't hold your breath.

Oh, and this looked cool too:

Pre-rendered? Probably.

Scary? Maybe.

Promising? Perhaps.

But worth supporting? Absolutely. Specifically because only recently, horror games seemed a dying breed - leftovers from a better era - yet here we have Outlast: a creepy new IP coming from brand new developer composed of former talent from several storied series, including Assassin's Creed, Uncharted, Prince of Persia and Splinter Cell.

Outlast is penciled in for release sometime next summer, and I'll be there, squared.

Will you? Or is there another horror game you're looking forward to?