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With Amnesia: Rebirth, Frictional Games hopes to recapture the magic of the original while introducing some new concepts. Developer and publisher Frictional Games announced that it’s working on a new Amnesia game that looks like a fresh start for the series as well as a return to what made the original game work. “What is Amnesia: Rebirth?” asks Thomas Grip, creative director at Frictional Games, in a PlayStation blog post. “A new protagonist, a new setting, a new story, but built on what we learned from the original game. No gimmicks. No inventing something completely new. This is Amnesia.” The relationship between old and new seems to be a big focus of Frictional’s new game. Grip says that “in horror, repetition is a deadly sin” but notes that Frictional wants to “return to those roots” of the Amnesia franchise. At the same time, Grip writes that “simple horror isn’t enough” and that Frictional “wants to take you beyond horror and out the other side.” Watch the announcement trailer for the game to see what Grip means: In terms of practical information about Amnesia: Rebirth, we really don’t know much. There are a few photos in the blog that hint at what is to come, but Grip didn’t share much about the title beyond those larger goals of what Frictional hopes to accomplish with Amnesia: Rebirth. The creative director notes that Rebirth is not “going for a carnival attraction of jumpscares,” which reinforces the idea that the sequel will build upon the atmospheric dread of the original Amnesia in some way. Frictional returning to the horror franchise that put the studio on the map is a big deal. Amnesia is not just a masterclass in a masterclass of horror game design but it’s arguably one of the most influential and greatest titles of its decade. As Frictional Games points out, Amnesia became an early example of a game that went viral on YouTube and other online outlets. It was so scary that it encouraged people to watch others play it just to see what their reactions to it would be. While Frictional Games went on to release another horror masterpiece, the underrated SOMA, the studio handed development of the second Amnesia title, A Machine for Pigs, off to developer The Chinese Room. A Machine for Pigs was fairly well-received, but some critics noted that it traded the incredible frights of the original in for more opportunities to tell an interesting (but sometimes overbearing) story. It seems that Frictional Games is reassuring players that it plans to undo any negative associations fans who were disappointed with A Machine for Pigs may have with the Amnesia name. We’ll find out more about Amnesia: Rebirth as it nears its release date sometime later this year.

If you’re looking to get spooky in June, there are few options better than Little Nightmares – especially now that it’s free. The adorably grotesque adventure is free-to-keep on Steam this weekend, so if you’re looking to add it to your collection, you should do it fast. (Goodness knows you don’t already have enough free PC games in your library.) Little Nightmares is free for you to claim on the Steam store until Monday, May 30 at 10am PDT / 1pm EDT / 6pm BST. You can hit that link and hit the ‘add to account’ button to permanently tie it to your library, and it’ll be available for you to download from then on just as with any game you might purchase for actual money. Plenty of people have been enjoying the promotion, too.steamdb shows a new record concurrent player count today of 78,169, astronomically bigger than the sub-2k player number at launch. Another free giveaway earlier this year brought 19,111 players digging in all at once, so this weekend’s freebie has proven even more po[CENSORED]r. It’s entirely clear why we’re getting regular giveaways of Little Nightmares, but it’s likely got something to do with the release of the sequel earlier this year – enjoy the first and you’ll probably grab the second, right?

Playing as a two-year-old brings a sense of wide-eyed wonder and some pretty tight restrictions on the actual gameplay. In my personal experience, there’s nothing more frightening than when the two-year-old in a horror movie or video game starts making cryptic drawings or saying ominous things about death or dead people. Kids are just naturally terrifying and spooky, right? Well Krillbite Studio decided to expand on this traditional horror concept by allowing us to actually play as the innocent toddler in Among the Sleep. But while the first-person explorative horror game is great on the atmosphere, does playing as a two-year-old have one too many limitations from a gameplay perspective? Among the Sleep starts out simply enough, with players assuming the role of a nameless and silent toddler protagonist on his second birthday. After your affectionate mother puts you to bed, it isn’t long before the game’s surrealist elements start to emerge, as your creepy new teddy bear Teddy starts talking and walking around, and serves as your guide through a warped and twisted journey through your own memories. While Teddy offers some sparse commentary along the way, his primary purpose in the game is to provide a fleeting light source when hugged to help you navigate the darker corners of the world. The story was actually my favorite part about Among the Sleep. While it doesn’t seem like much at first, the surprising and rewarding ending sheds some crucial details that will cast the world around you in an entirely different light, and gives a new sense of depth to the protagonist’s journey through these fragmented memories. It might even warrant a second playthrough of the incredibly brief game, to experience this world with a newfound sense of enlightenment. For what it’s worth, the game’s atmosphere does do its job of putting you in the shoes (or footsy pajamas) of a two-year-old toddler. Everything seems abnormally taller around you, and there’s a certain sense of wonder in exploring familiar locations like a bedroom or a kitchen and seeing where you can actually go with your limited skills: pulling out drawers and using them as footholds to climb up a dresser is a key component to progressing through the game. Even the surrealist locations are mesmerizing to look at, from dark playgrounds and forests, to a dilapidated playhouse with peeling paint on the walls. And the best part is that it all makes sense coming from the perspective of a toddler. I especially liked the fact that you move faster when crawling, as opposed to when walking upright. While this mechanic is realistic and serves to add to the story’s believability, it also allows you to crawl under tables to hide from the sinister things that are lurking in the shadows. But while the presentation is great, there’s a reason why the two-year-old is never the main character in your favorite horror flick or game: there’s not all that many interesting things that a toddler can do. As a result, the gameplay in Among the Sleep really suffers, if you could even call it gameplay. Aside from moving objects and climbing on them to access new areas, the majority of the gameplay involves collecting a handful of items and occasionally avoiding a monster that roams a given room, much like a Slender game. Among the Sleep can be completed in well under two hours, and there really isn’t anything else to see or do in the game outside of the primary and very linear main pathway. The only time I ever needed to restart a section was when the game glitched on me, jamming up a platform I had to cross in order to continue. Other bugs in the game are just more disrupting, like one which casts the background visuals in a bright and demonic shade of red. But glitches aside, the game and its limited puzzles are still so easy that a two-year-old could do it. Oh wait a minute… In the end, Among the Sleep is a brief but interesting experience of playing a horror game from a completely different perspective. While not particularly fulfilling in a gameplay sense, there’s still something that’s worth exploring here in the poignant and minimalist story, as well as the surrealist and often captivating worlds as they appear in the eyes and the mind of a child.