PlayStation fans have been following the development of AMY for some time now and have been giving us tremendous support – we sincerely thank you for that. Others are just discovering this original upcoming PSN survival-horror game for the first time. What none of you have seen is the actual gameplay that lies at the heart of the game: the very unique relationship between Amy and Lana, our lead character.
When you mention ‘a very unique relationship’ in a video game, it may bring to mind ICO, a game that many of us consider a milestone in video game history. The recent re-release of the HD version by PlayStation brought back many memories for us. The first time you finished ICO, what remained was great emotional depth and a rare feeling of empathy for Yorda, the young woman you try to protect. Before playing ICO, the simple idea of protecting a non-playable character seemed tedious and dull. And yet, in ICO, you never had the feeling of doing a long escort mission. You really wanted to protect her.
In Amy, we didn’t try to ape ICO and the two games are quite different; each developer has its own references, world, and vision. But one thing is the same: the constant effort to create empathy for the secondary character. As Lana, a young woman in a city infested by zombies and monstrous creatures, you try to protect Amy, an 8-year old girl that doesn’t seem to talk. Lana is infected and fights against a virus that threatens to transform her into a mindless beast. Only Amy, unexpectedly, can temporary heal her so that they have to stand by each other.
The bond between the two characters is made visible by the way they look at each other, by the way one can protect the other, but also by the way they hold each other’s hand.
The hand that you take when you want Amy to follow you is at the heart of the game. In many occasions, it even means salvation in your extremely hostile environment: when holding Amy’s hand, you can hear her heart beat and you can even feel it (with a rumble controller). When she feels a close danger, you can be sure that fear is conveyed directly into your hand, especially when you know you’re about to fight a fierce enemy.
In the exclusive video we’ve just made, you can see how the two behave and cooperate with each other. Our core focus was to try to make you want to keep Amy safe. If you want to learn more about Amy, you can see our previous video about Lana’s infection here. Please check out our official site for more details and support us on Facebook. Thanks for reading!
You’ve got to have pretty big cajones to analogize your game to ICO, however obliquely. I hope you can deliver.
Hi lisatsunami – If we sound like we’re comparing AMY to ICO, I need to apologize. This was not the purpose. Paul Cuisset, the author of Amy and of other games such as Flashback, has a lot of respect for Mr. Ueda’s work; the two games obviously don’t play in the same ground. What I was trying to say is that ICO and AMY are both based on the feeling of protection and that we tried to convey this feeling in our own way. Not mentioning ICO when releasing a game that enables you to hold a secondary character by the hand wouldn’t have been honest toward Mr. Ueda’s work and innovative feature.