Amy (video game)

Lore & Background

The player controls Lana, who must escort Amy, an eight-year-old, through a city overrun by infected creatures. Lana starts succumbing to the plague without medicine and must stay close to Amy for healing. Syringes allow Lana to heal without returning to Amy, but when partially infected she can safely walk past zombies, requiring a balance between healing and zombification. Amy can use shockwaves to push enemies and objects, create a sound bubble to muffle noise, hack computers, and climb through vents.

Reader's Guide

Amy was widely panned by critics. IGN's Colin Moriarty gave up in frustration near the end of the fifth chapter. Game Informer's Jeff Cork called it terrible and to be avoided. James Stephanie Sterling of Destructoid described it as 'one of the worst games ever made'. Ben 'Yahtzee' Croshaw of The Escapist criticized the camera views and poor optimization, later calling it the worst game of 2012 and second worst of the 2010s. The most positive PlayStation 3 review praised the main protagonist but criticized lack of explanation. GamesRadar+ said it was boring and unpleasant. 411Mania gave the Xbox 360 version 3.3/10, citing frustrating controls. The A.V. Club gave it a D, Metro UK gave it 1/10, and The Digital Fix gave the PlayStation 3 version 1/10. It was included among the worst games of all time by GamesRadar+ in 2014 and 2017.

Gameplay and the Dual Survival Loop

Amy's gameplay centers on the player controlling Lana, a woman tasked with escorting and shielding an eight-year-old girl through a city consumed by a zombie-like infection. The core tension arises from a dual survival loop: Lana must keep Amy hidden from the infected to avoid detection, yet she herself is slowly succumbing to the plague and must periodically return to Amy for healing. Infrequent syringes offer temporary relief, but the game introduces a deliberate trade-off—once Lana's infection reaches a certain threshold, she can walk past zombies undetected, forcing the player to weigh the safety of zombification against the danger of being spotted. Beyond basic evasion, Amy provides a suite of supernatural abilities that Lana must call upon at key moments: shockwaves that hurl enemies and objects to create distractions, a sound bubble that muffles the clatter of broken or stepped-on glass, the ability to hack into computers, and the capacity to squeeze through ventilation shafts. Together, these mechanics create a stealth experience built around protecting a vulnerable child while managing one's own deteriorating health.

Narrative and the Threat of the Phoenix Foundation

The story follows Amy, an autistic eight-year-old girl possessing supernatural powers, and her guardian Lana, voiced by Sabine Crossen. The two are en route to a doctor in Silver City by train when a sudden explosion derails their vehicle, stranding them in a city that has been overrun by a bizarre infection turning its inhabitants into wild, hostile creatures. With their original plan shattered, Lana and Amy must navigate the ruined urban landscape, fending off both the infected monsters and armed military forces. Adding a layer of human threat, the Phoenix Foundation—a shadowy organization—hunts them with the explicit goal of capturing Amy and exploiting her extraordinary abilities for their own purposes. The narrative thus weaves together survival horror, a child-protection escort structure, and a conspiracy thriller, all set against the backdrop of a city where the line between the infected and the sane has collapsed entirely.

A Consensus of Critical Rejection

Upon release, Amy was met with overwhelmingly negative critical response, earning 'generally unfavorable' ratings on Metacritic across both its PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions. Reviewers consistently cited broken controls, poor optimization, awkward camera angles, and a save system riddled with widely spaced checkpoints that forced repeated traversal of punishing sections. IGN's Colin Moriarty reported spending over a dozen hours before abandoning the title at the end of chapter five, citing sheer frustration. Destructoid's James Stephanie Sterling labeled it one of the worst games ever made, while Ben Croshaw of The Escapist ranked it the worst title of 2012 and the second-worst of the entire 2010s, behind only Hunt Down the Freeman. The A.V. Club awarded a D, and Metro UK and The Digital Fix each gave a one-out-of-ten. Even the most favorable review, from GamingXP's Thomas Pichler, praised the protagonist while criticizing the game's failure to explain objectives. GamesRadar+ included Amy on its list of the worst games of all time in both 2014 and 2017.

Development, Release, and a Modest Patch

Developed by VectorCell and published by Lexis Numérique, Amy launched in 2012 as a survival horror stealth title for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game's post-release support was limited but notable: on 3 April 2012, VectorCell announced a patch through the game's official Facebook page, with the update going live on 6 April. The patch addressed several of the most common complaints, introducing the ability to save progress mid-chapter, adding additional checkpoints to reduce the frustration of long repeated sections, allowing players to skip certain in-game sequences, and correcting multiple subtitle errors. Despite these fixes, the patch arrived after the initial wave of scathing reviews had already cemented the game's reputation. The title's brief development footprint and the modest scope of its sole update underscore the challenges faced by smaller studios attempting to compete in the survival horror space, a genre dominated by major publishers and their triple-A productions.

Gallery