Yes, it is officially an Amnesia game. The rumors are true, and the first official details about Frictional and thechineseroom's upcoming horror game have dropped, courtesy of an interview over at Joystiq.
The game is set in 1899, sixty years after Amnesia: The Dark Descent. Though there's no direct connection with that game, it will share "the same universe". It stars a "rich industrial tycoon" named Oswald Mandus, who wakes up on New Year's day in London with a bad case of (you guessed it) amnesia. He's spent months in a nightmare-filled coma after a "disastrous and tragic" expedition to Mexico, and now he must find the truth behind a mysterious machine he saw there, while piecing together his memories. Also he will be terrified.
Dear Esther writer Dan Pinchbeck will be acting as lead designer and writer, and Frictional will be acting in a production role. The game will use Frictional's HPL2 engine, and while its gameplay will be featuring elements from The Dark Descent, new ones will be added and "people going in will not know what to expect". Other than to be terrified, I imagine.
It's due on PC, Mac and Linux, and they're hoping to launch before Halloween 2012. Read the rest of the interview at Joystiq for more details, some concept art, and a hilarious anecdote about ARGs and a Chinese restaurant.
Building A Machine for Pigs and expanding the universe of Amnesia [Joystiq]
Contest:
9:00 PM on 02.22.2012 | 
> Ozzy Mandus
> Ozymandius
HOW CRYPTIC AND CULTURED OF YOU FRICTIONAL.
No but really this is gonna own bones.
Oh well.
No you didn't, you were just too scared to keep playing it.
Which reminds me, I should get off my ass and play the Penumbra series.
More seriously: Can't wait. Also can't wait for Spoiler Warning to stand on the heads of all the zombies.
If only you could half nelson monsters.
On a lighter note, does anyone else think Frictional's games would work well with Kinect?
Well it depends on what you mean by really shit. As a coherent work art and as a video game, it failed in both regards. As an intriguing and atmospheric experience that made use of no game mechanics whatsoever to provide a flawed, unique and unforgettable experience, it succeeded.
I think of Dear Esther as an interesting experiment in what games can be, not a game in itself, and the product of that experiment stands to work extremely well when combined with the Amnesia formula.
for Allistair here it was mediocre, apparently. For a lot of other people http://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/dear-esther it was something incredible.
it was really polarizing and really truly not for everyone
Spot on. Everything you said. I really do think it's worth the 10 bucks not just to experience something so unique, but to vote with your wallet and tell the industry that this is the kind of daring, experimental forward thinking we expect as gamers.
That having been said, I fucking adored Dear Esther. Far and away the most unique, exciting gaming experience I've had so far this year.
But I'd like to throw the hipster card, and say I wrote about Dear Esther when it was just a mod and before their next mod Korsakovia came out.
As a child I used to have horrific nightmares about colossal industrial machinery, stretching out in all direction towards infinity. I have feeling this game is going to be particularly disturbing for me.
I had similar dreams. Try the fract demo if you haven't yet