‘Amnesia’ Competitor ‘Erie’ Launches On Desura Just In Time For Halloween

Erie is a new survival horror game on Desura, and has made its way to #1 on the list. It has come out just in time for Halloween and was created by two graduate students from the University of Utah’s Entertainment Arts and Engineering. Erie is set to be one of the scariest games in the indie scene and looks to take the place of Amnesia and Slender. Erie was made as part of their group thesis project, in which the player is dropped into a dark sewer complex in a small Michigan town during the 1960′s. Erie puts you right in the middle of things without giving you much orientation. The player finds himself trapped while also being hunted and needing to find a quick escape.

In Erie you will gather various clues and collect dead cats. Hopefully those cats aren’t black though! Erie was developed in a year, and along with it being a thesis project, it was also partly research into creating the element of fear using interactive narrative. Erie is a combined effort of various student artists, developers, designers and producers. The game was developed using its iterative design to experiment with different scare tactics, level layouts and the psychology of fear. Erie challenges the fact that people have said survival horror games are dead, and judging by the reviews and publicity it has gotten, Erie‘s launch has definitely been successful.

All that said, Erie is a survival horror game that is available for free on Desura, check it out if you’re up for a quick scare.