Back in the early days of YouTube, countless aspiring creators flocked to the platform to upload videos of themselves playing games like Penumbra and the physics based psychological horror Amnesia. Those games were practically tailor made for the era, delivering plenty of jump scares and tense moments that made for entertaining reaction videos and helped cement the series as one of the defining names in indie horror. Now, Amnesia: Rebirth has made its way to the Nintendo Switch 2. Has this once iconic horror series stood the test of time, or is it better left forgotten?

I don’t think it works anymore…

Amnesia: Rebirth is a first person survival horror game in the same vein as its predecessors. There is no combat here. Instead, you’ll spend your time hiding from terrifying creatures, solving environmental puzzles, and trying to keep your ever dwindling sanity intact. It’s the franchise’s bread and butter, and Amnesia was one of the pioneers of this particular style of survival horror.

You play as Tasi, who awakens in the wreckage of a plane crash as seemingly the only survivor. To make matters worse, she’s stranded in the middle of the desert with the sun beating down on her… and it looks like she owes it money. After a desperate trek across the dunes, she stumbles upon a cave, with plenty of evidence suggesting the rest of her expedition sought refuge there as well. Naturally, you decide to venture into its dark depths, slowly piecing together what happened after the crash while discovering that the cave isn’t nearly as abandoned as you were hoping.

A truly homely environment.

In a slight twist on the formula, you’ll soon discover that Tasi forgot one very important detail: she’s pregnant, and very visibly so. That raises the stakes considerably, as you’re not only trying to keep your own sanity intact, but also minimize the stress placed on your unborn child. Easier said than done when you’re being chased through ancient caves by monsters that want to tear you apart, or randomly hopping between dimensions over the course of this ten hour mystery.

If you’ve played an Amnesia game before, you’ll already know what to expect. If this is your first time, don’t worry, you don’t need to play the previous entries to understand what’s going on here. The gameplay loop is fairly straightforward. It’s a constant game of cat and mouse where spending too long in the darkness causes your sanity to deteriorate, while light helps restore it… at the cost of making you far easier to spot by the very creatures trying to turn you into their next meal.

This is my Street Fighter motto.

The puzzles are genuinely enjoyable and require a bit of thought to solve. Having to work them out while constantly looking over your shoulder for whatever horror is lurking nearby adds a nice layer of tension. The dark, twisting caves don’t help either, with every corridor looking just similar enough to leave you hopelessly turned around. It’s all good, classic survival horror. The only downside is that Amnesia: Rebirth doesn’t really bring anything new to the table. Games like SOMA, Outlast, and Alien: Isolation have all built upon this formula in memorable ways, making Rebirth feel a little too familiar by comparison.

Amnesia: Rebirth places a much stronger emphasis on its story than previous entries, and that focus bleeds into the gameplay. The experience feels noticeably more linear, with the game gently nudging you towards your next objective instead of leaving you to stumble across it in a panic. At times, it almost feels closer to a walking simulator than a survival horror game. Getting caught by a monster isn’t nearly as punishing as it used to be, and any progress you’ve already made on puzzles remains intact after you respawn. While that certainly makes the game less frustrating, it also strips away some of the tension that made the earlier Amnesia titles so effective.

Enjoying some in-flight reading.

Amnesia: Rebirth isn’t exactly a new game. It originally launched back in 2020, and it isn’t even the latest entry in the series. That honour belongs to Amnesia: The Bunker. Why am I bringing this up, I hear you ask? Because for a 2020 game running on the Nintendo Switch 2, the technical performance is surprisingly disappointing. It barely clings to 30fps, stutters like it has a bad case of nerves, and even the textures don’t look as sharp as they probably should.

That becomes even harder to ignore when you consider that Cyberpunk 2077 can run at a mostly stable 40fps on the same hardware while looking absolutely fantastic. It really puts ports like this under the microscope. It’s a damn shame, if you ask me.

It’s not looking good, bruv.

The sound design is top notch, which is exactly what you want from a game like this. The ambient audio is almost deafening in its silence, making every distant footstep, creaking floorboard, and unsettling noise stand out. Hearing a monster shamble through the cave while you’re hiding under a rickety table is enough to keep your heart racing. The voice acting is equally impressive, with the cast delivering genuinely convincing performances instead of the hokey, over the top dialogue that’s so often associated with the horror genre.​

This picture speaks for itself.

I didn’t hate my time with Amnesia: Rebirth. It was nice to see the series continue on Nintendo consoles, but the game feels far more dated than it really should. Between the disappointing performance and the step backwards in gameplay, it ends up feeling older than some of its predecessors. Perhaps it’s just a speed bump on the road to Amnesia: The Bunker. If that’s the case, then at least Frictional Games clearly learned a few valuable lessons along the way.

Amnesia: Rebirth is available now on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series S/X, PC and Switch 2.

Reviewed on Nintendo Switch 2.

A copy of Amnesia: Rebirth was provided by the publisher.