There are some things in life that I admire but can’t claim to properly understand. These include the literary works of James Joyce, the vegan lifestyle, and people who want to play incredibly scary games in VR. I like horror games, but there’s a limit on my tolerance, and Amnesia: The Dark Descent landed right on that limit when it slithered out of Frictional Games’ culvert a terrifying thirteen years ago. Hence, the mere idea of playing that game in VR makes me shudder.
But if you are the kind of person who likes to put on white VR goggles and later take off brown pants, let me introduce you to Sclerosis: an Amnesia VR remake. To be clear, this is not an official remake of Frictional’s landmark horror. But it is also a bit more than just a mod. Sclerosis’ ModDB page describes it as a “1:1 recreation of the entire game in Unity engine, making VR possible.”
This overhaul included “completely redesigned controls” that facilitate VR controllers, enabling you to physically open doors and pull levers with your virtual hands. It’s been years since I played the original Amnesia, but I know that it had highly tactile controls to begin with, so I can totally see this element working in VR.
(Image credit: Frictional Games, CreaTeam)
Alongside the VR implementation, Sclerosis also adds a “safe mode” that removes the aggressive monsters from the game so you can enjoy the atmosphere without losing your wits to the horrors that prowl castle Brennenburg. This is something that Frictional introduced in later games like SOMA, but never added to the original Amnesia, so that’s a welcome inclusion. It adds a PSX mode too, just in case you want to play the game like you’ve smeared Vaseline all over your screen.
All together, it sounds like a pretty impressive overhaul. Shame the devs couldn’t get it ready for Hallowe’en, but it’s rocketing up the ModDB rankings nonetheless, currently ranked 512 out of 55,000 mods. You can download it here. And if you can’t or won’t play horror games in VR, you should check out this year’s new Amnesia game: The Bunker, which as Ted so eloquently explained in his review, is comfortably one of the best games of 2023.
