A corridor, a lantern going dim, and the unbearable idea that you really should not look.

When the community picks on gut instinct, Amnesia: The Dark Descent only edges past a third of the catalogue. That is low, and the detail explains why. Controller feel drops to ahead of just 18% of titles, the soundtrack ahead of 16%, fun ahead of 21%, attachment ahead of 22%. A game you do not play for the pleasure of playing, and it owns that. Two lines still hold: art direction, ahead of 61% of games and on the fullest sample of its profile, and the wish to rediscover it for the first time, ahead of 60%. That tracks. This game truly works once, and plenty would love to relive that first descent.

Against criteria built around attachment, controller feel and playlists, a survival horror that takes your weapons away and asks you to run starts with a structural handicap. What makes it great, pure fear, is not what these questions measure.

So, who is it for? For you if you want an experience that genuinely unsettles you, the one that redefined first person horror. Much less so if you want a game you fire up in the evening to unwind.