Amnesia: The Dark Descent is, without doubt, one of the most influential Survival Horror games ever made. It had set trends in the genre for years to come and played a major part in launching careers of such titans of Let's Play as PewDiePie, Markiplier, Cryaotic...
However, one of the major downsides of Amnesia is a low replay value due to it, in its core, being a mix of a linear Adventure Game and a Stealth-Based Game with sparse, slow, and stupid enemies who are scary almost purely because of the psychological factor and became trivial (and tiresome) to get around once you know exactly where and when they are going to appear. But then... how those aforementioned titans of Let's Play were able to continiously churn out Amnesia content over the course of a few years back in the day? The answer: custom levels for the game, created with the help of the Level Editor originally avaliable for free on the developer's website and later included in the Steam release of the game, had came to their rescue.
Strictly speaking, the name "custom story" refers only to one type of Amnesia mods: custom campaigns accessed from the game's main menu. Apart from them, Level Editor allows for creation of a so-called "Full Conversion (FC) mods", which are launched from their own executable file and pretty much work as full-fledged fan DLCs for the game. Full conversion mods support some feaures custom stories do not, most notably their own main menu and custom lanterns. However, in practice a lot of fans use the term "custom story" to refer to all (non-cosmetic) Amnesia mods, and in October 2023, the game's Steam version had recieved an update that allowed it to launch Full Conversion mods from the Custom Stories menu (while still preserving all of their features), effectively merging the two categories of mods into one from the player's perspective. Thus, this page would use the name "custom story" to refer to both custom stories and full conversions.
Since the game's original release, more than a thousand of custom stories were created, of wildly varying length, difficulty, degree of difference from the original game, and quality. Some of them became popular enough to be unofficially considered a part of authentic Amnesia expierence, especially among letsplayers; while others are so original and well-made that they probably could have passed for a standalone game. But of course, the vast majority of them are amateurish Slender knockoffs at best, lazily cobbled together rooms or corridors filled with nothing but piles of identical barrels and crates with an occasional Jumpscare thrown in at worst.
Both Amnesia: Rebirth and Amnesia: The Bunker do support custom content as well, but neither of these games had its player-created content became as popular as one made for the first game, while Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs had no support for player-created content whatsoever.
Tropes generally found in custom stories:
- Air-Vent Passageway: Are encountered in a lot of custom stories, for example in The Grey Eagle or The Machine. Curiously, there were none of them in the base game, except for one instance in Justine DLC.
- Amnesiac Hero: Many stories start with the protagonist waking up in the room with either not remembering how they had ended up there, or full-blown Identity Amnesia, just like the original game. This serves as a convenient excuse for creators to not feature introductory scenes, which take a lot of effort and scripting to do properly.
- Animalistic Abomination:
- Tenebris Lake had featured unholy beings that looked like hybrids between a human, a bat, and a leech. This monster's model was later reused by the creators of a couple of other stories, such as The Grey Eagle and Obscurity.
- A very few custom stories use mutated dogs from Penumbra: Overture as enemies.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Appear in some custom stories. Expect them either to follow the protagonist via Offscreen Teleportation for some time, either suddenly fly off for no visible reason, startling the player. See also Living Statue below.
- The Artifact: The majority of the custom stories do not use diaries, some do not bother with mementos, and a few don't even use tinderboxes. However, due to the limitations of the engine, all of these are still there in the inventory when you are playing them. This may be averted with Full Conversion mods.
- Bookcase Passage: A frequent appearance in custom stories, due to the two instances of them in the base game (three if you count Justine).
- A Coward's Debt is notable for being one of the only stories so far to justify this - Jean had built a network of secret passages in his mansion for his household's servants to use without disturbing their master's guests with their presence during banquets.
- Cut and Paste Environments: In lower-quality stories, rooms often are an exact copy of each other. Sometimes, they are clearly copies of one of the levels from the base game, usually the Cellar Archives (including a Kaernk chase).
- Downer Ending: Given that they are mods for the horror game, many of the custom stories do not have a good ending. Quite a lot of protagonists die at the end, sometimes in the anticlimactic fashion.
- Excuse Plot: Unfortunately, a lot of custom stories have little to no actual story to tell, instead focusing on scares and Survival Horror gameplay. Most of these come from the era when custom stories were popular on YouTube, being created presumably in the hopes that their favorite YouTuber will play it. Naturally, this led to a lot of imitation and a focus on cheap scares to give their intended target something to overreact to.
- Featureless Protagonist: Usually, although few stories, like Destiny Rebellion or Helena avert this by giving their protagonists actual backstories, characterizations, and personal stake in the plot's conflict. Both aforementioned stories even have officialnote art of their protagonists!
- Gravity Screw: A commonly used way of making a custom story feel more surreal, as it's very easily done by simply rotating objects to be upside down.
- Haunted Castle: With the base game being a Survival Horror game set in a castle, this trope is to be expected from custom stories as well. May double as Big Fancy Castle if the author had put a lot of effort in the map design.
- Haunted House: Another typical setting of a custom story, with the player character either living in or exploring one. Usually the interior is built with "mansionbase" asset set (which the base game used for levels such as Study or Archives) for fancier rooms, and "cellarbase" asset set (which was originally used for portraying places like Wine Cellar or Storage) for cruder rooms. Analogously to the trope above, may double as Big Fancy House.
- Hub Level: If the story has even slightest degree of non-linearity, it then is almost guaranteed to have at least one such level. Some, like Abduction or Helena, have two Hub Levels.
- Jump Scare: While the original game was praised for generally averting this trope, a lot of the low-quality custom stories play it straight as one of the main sources of scariness.
- The infamous "Iron maiden jumpscare"note (the sole instance of this trope happening in the original game) became somewhat of a meme among the custom stories community due to a lot of modmakers blatantly plagiarizing it.
- Another common form of this is the "Flying Naked Dead Guy" or "Teleporting Naked Guy": a male corpse that suddenly appears accompanied by a scream, often the same sound as the aforementioned iron maiden jumpscare.
- Living Statue: Are encountered, in one form or another, in a lot of custom stories. Two prominent forms are a naked female angel statue (that was just a decorative asset from Justine) and an animated decorative armor suit. Depending on the story, some statues follow you, some hurt you if you get near them, and some talk to you and may even protect you from monsters.
- Lock and Key Puzzle: The staple of plot progression in a custom story. Common variationsnote include:
- Literally finding a key that unlocks a certain door. Puzzles in lower-quality custom stories may consist of this exclusively. A variant of this is finding some sort of a lock-picking tool (usually a standard Hollow Needle item) instead of a normal key.
- Alternatively, instead of opening the door, you need to break it by using Hammer and Chipper (or just the Hammer sometimes) or by repeatedly throwing a physics object item such as a chair or a rock into it. Sometimes, instead of locked doors, you break brick walls blocking your path after finding a weak spot in the wall.
- Or you need to use a crowbar to pry the door open. The crowbar has a tendency to break right after the author decides the player no longer needs it. Some don't even bother with the interactive part of prying the door open, instead treating the crowbar like a key.
- Collecting the three parts of a hand drill and then using the drill crafted out of them to drill a hole in something to progress forward.
- Collecting the chemical ingredients and mixing them together to create an explosive or super corrosive substance that is then used to destroy an obstacle in your way.
- Minimalist Cast: As consequence of HPL engine being very bad at handling friendly humanoid NPCs (both graphic-wise and interactions-wise), almost all custom stories have the cast limited to the Player Character, the monster(s) pursuing the player character, the Big Bad of the story (who usually only appears in person at the very end), a few people already dead from the beginning, and occasionally, one or two characters who never appear in person and only communicate with the protagonist remotely. Sometimes the Big Bad himself is the monster. And sometimes, the protagonist actually is the monster or the BigBad, but doesn't know it himself yet.
- Non-Action Guy: Almost every protagonist is this (well, or Non Action Girl in cases such as Emma's series) by necessity of HPL engine having no combat mechanics until Amnesia: The Bunker. However, Destiny Rebellion manages to subvert this by having its main character Ralf Siffer fight otherworldly horrors using swords.
- Our Monsters Are Different: Most stories still use the default Grunts, Brutes, and Suitors from the original game as enemies, although what they are supposed to be in-universe varies from story to story. Sometimes they're undead, sometimes they're artificial beings, sometimes they're figments of the player character's imagination, sometimes they are mutated humans, sometimes they are demons and sometimes there may be just no explanation of where they come from.
- Run or Die: Popular custom stories just love these moments. The "death" chasing you may be a Brute, a Suitor, an Advancing Wall of Doom, or something more original like a teleporting statue that hurts/kills you if it approaches you closely.
- Rain deserves a mention for having a rare vertical variant - at one point early in the story, the protagonist has to extract the key from a bottom of the massive shaft. Once he has a key and steps onto the stairs leading upwards, the shaft begins to collapse, and the bottom starts flooding with bood with a horrific speed. The player then has to run upwards the collapsing staircase, quickly finding his way around the collapsed parts, or literally drown in blood, dying instantly.
- Story Breadcrumbs: The staple of storytelling in a custom story. It is practically necessitated for exposition due to the engine's impotence at creating cutscenes, and most custom stories don't bother with the full voice acting required for the game's other narrative tools, such as Flashbacks.
- Teleporting Keycard Squad: Much more so than the base game, sometimes to the egregious degree. Often used as a form of Jump Scare, spawning a monster the moment an item is picked up, right where it can see the player. If the creator is feeling merciful, they'll make it a harmless hallucination that evaporates at approaching the player.
- Troll Fic:
- A lot of the early custom stories were very obviously only made to elicit a surprised or amused response from letsplayers, with Dark Room being the most successful.
- There is an old custom story named Icarus. It begins with some Scenery Porn of the mysterious garden with the castle ruins in it, located on what appears to be the cloud-covered top of the mountain, with no sounds except the soothing, barely audible background music. Starting to explore this place would give the player the series of notes and messages that address him as "beloved" and encourage him to "rise to the skies", ostenshibly to "reunite" with someone. Following the messages, the player ascends to the highest room of the ruins and sees the silhouette of a woman standing before him... But taking one step towards the woman immediatedly turns her into a Brute that instantly kills the player. And that's where the story ends.
- Another old custom story, Let's Play One Game? consists of nothing but a Rhythm Game in which the player must pull as many correct levers as possible over the course of 5 minutes. Pulling each new lever starts playing one of the few songs, two of which are the
"Trololo song" and "Never Gonna Give You Up". After the game's time is up, the player is shown his score (simply the number of correct levers he/she had pulled) with the message "Now you know how much of a nolifer you are!"
- Zero-Effort Boss: If there is a decisive encounter with a Big Bad at the end, it is bound to be this, due to Amnesia engine having no real support for any sort of combat mechanics. Destiny Rebellion and Emma's Nightmare try to avert Anti-Climax by having the final battle be the prolonged action-packed sequence using unique mechanics and gimmicks made just for this moment as well as be accompanied with epic music and special effects, which makes the Boss Battle feel at least somewhat exciting despite being a Foregone Victory.