While I’m well aware that there were many people who absolutely adored Amnesia: Dark Descent, I’ll admit that while it was fine, and had its moments, I wasn’t a massive fan of it either. Then again I’ve struggled with the majority of indie horror games on the Switch, not so much because I don’t enjoy horror games but just because I tend to see such limited payoffs in them. Internally, I tend to blame it on games that may be great for livestreaming while people are watching the player react to jumpscares or the overall level of tension, but that doesn’t necessarily translate to being engaging or exciting while playing them.

Perhaps if you’re reading this interested in whether this is a good horror game, thinking of the pedigree of its well-known predecessor, I’ll stop burying the lede and share the critical fact that this really isn’t a horror game. That isn’t to say there aren’t moments of tension where you’ll get that uneasy feeling in the pit of your stomach, but since you don’t face any true mortal threats, that does tend to take the teeth out of things. You will be pursued by some terrors in the dark, and you will get overwhelmed by them if you don’t manage to stay in the light enough, but when you come to you’ll apparently have escaped to a lit spot nearby, sort of popping the balloon if you were hoping for more chilling moments. You will see quick shots that are mildly unnerving perhaps, but it all feels quite tame.

What it offers instead is a fair amount of mystery, trying to determine what has happened to your husband and the crew of your plane that crashed in the desert. Exploring through the darkness, often armed with only a match, you’ll continue to discover remnants of the people you’re looking for. Those discoveries will often be accompanied by visions that seem to indicate you were with them at one point, but you are unable to account for what has happened. The good news is that the dynamic lighting and some of the on-screen effects to look pretty great on the Switch 2, and the visual fidelity here is a welcome improvement over the previous titles, but you’ll need to set your expectations properly for a lot of walking around and exploring, some tense moments to be sure, and some puzzles, but by no means a comparable level of scares you may have expected in this new outing for the series.