Amnesia Notes

Genre: Survival Horror
Daniel, the main character; recently regain conciousness with no prior memories; save for his name.
The game actually starts with him actually drinking something to rid his memories.

He wakes up in a castle, the only thing that gives the player and idea of what to do is the trail of pink liquid dotted in the floor. The game begins with no actual goal per say, but more having to look for the purpose to being with.

Flashes of his memory or letters from his former self tell the player what Daniel must do, revealing bit about him and also hints for what to do to progress through the game.
Right off the bat, the first letter that you find after following the pink tells you what you goal is, why Daniel has no memories and to set the fear into the player; that something is following him.
The gameplay is all in first person, putting the player in Daniels shoes, I felt that the narritive for this in particular accentuated the the whole scariness of the whole game, first person prevents you from seeing what is beind Daniel; generating a paranoia of anything out of his field of vision. This whole concept is accentuated by the lack of weapons.
There is a heavy focus on the exploration of the castle, which is ironically much safer than outside; the aim not being to escape but to find the person in the castle and kill them.

Puzzles forward progression, obvious puzzle based blocks or players using their ingenuity to find methods to progress onwards from what stops you.

The game actually uses the characters sanity as a factor in the gameplay - works well for horror. Light regains sanity, being able to see , a basic fear; mind playing tricks on you with the dark; light makes it better.

In terms of enemies/ antagonists; confrontation is anything but advised. Monsters are extremely strong, you cannot kill them and have a degree of intelligence to them; some more so than others. For example light and noises attract their attention. What makes the monsters scary is that confrontations are few and far between, you dont get a good look at any monster until about 30-40 minutes into the game. The lack of interaction with hostile entities keep the player on edge while wandering the castle; every area pretty much needs to be looked over with a fine tooth comb to progress, however that fear pushes the player to be constantly wary of their actions.
There are the select monsters that are triggered due to plot purposes, however I recently learned that there are other monsters that randomly pop up. So even the secrity of knowing what monster appears where cant make the player feel anymore secure.
Fear is also generated from the lack of contact with other living things, save for the monsters. Being alone in a disturbing place in itself is scary; so seeking solace by finding someone else eases the terrors; however there is the fear in finding something living in the castle, making the process even more difficult.