Soma (From the amnesia guys!)

Looks interesting although I find the design of the enemy, sort of underwhelming. I never felt nervous or uneasy when it was nearby and I did not really get much of a jump at the end either. In comparison the enemy in Amnesia Justine was terrifying to me, the wheezing noise when it got nearby could keep me on edge even after it left and when it did find me I panicked more than I tried to escape it.

The design of the world is somewhat interesting in a few ways, the sci-fi design of the place did feel very generic but for the most part I felt that was great was with the robots, especially with the sarcastic guy that believed he was human, maybe he is really or he just got programmed to think that way, I do not know, which is what makes it interesting.

Voice was interesting, for the most part it use to be flashbacks for the main character to speak but now he actually communicates, good for story, not for much else, It feels strange how he speaks casually whenever but manages to keep fully silent when the enemy is nearby, does not mesh too well. Plus you lose the feeling that it is you in these situations, which is really what helps to drive the fear home.

Okay concept but I don't feel like I need to see much more of it.

The devs released this statement with the video:

Quote

We at Frictional Games started working on SOMA in the autumn of 2010, so the game has been in development for almost five years now. This makes it extremely satisfying for us to finally be able to reveal a release date and to look forward to unleashing our creation upon the world.

So why has the game taken so long to make?

The biggest issue has been how to handle our themes properly. We didn’t want SOMA to be just another ‘run from the monster’-affair. While it does have that sort of thing too, as our gameplay video shows, the horror runs way deeper.

The aim with SOMA is to explore the unsettling aspects of subjects such as consciousness, identity and our very existence. We didn’t want to do this by simply having some ham-fisted exposition now and then, we wanted the player to experience this first-hand.

Getting this right has been extremely hard as it’s not something you can easily iterate on. Creating that disturbing sense of existential horror just right takes hours of setup. It also requires a lot of assets to be in place before it can be tested properly. So while other games can make several iterations a week on their foundational elements, it’s taken us roughly a year for each iteration.

Two months ago we sent out the beta, our final iteration, to a bunch of testers. This was quite scary as we knew this would be our final major revision. We’d carried out two big tests prior to that and were pretty clear on what issues to hone in on, but of course we couldn’t be sure that we had made the right choices. If testers failed to have the experience that we wanted them to this time around, there wouldn’t have been much we could do about it.

So it came as a huge relief when the feedback came back overwhelmingly positive. Even those who gave us negative feedback experienced the crucial aspects of the game as we’d intended and liked the game overall. While there were a wide range of reactions, they were all strong and dealt with the topics we’d intended to raise. This makes us quite confident that we managed to achieve our goals and have created a horror game that delves into new, spine-chilling territory.

So all that’s left for us now is just to polish as much of the game as we can, and to make our final release the best one possible. We are all extremely excited about releasing SOMA, and looking forward to hearing what you guys think of it!

Display More

Oh, btw. it's coming out on 22nd of September!

I'm loving the atmosphere so far! Looks great.

Ive been following the dev of this game for as long as its been publicly available, the themes and meta reality to it is really fucking cool, I am looking forward to this game a lot.

Really digging the atmosphere, so much detail all around.

I'm intrigued, and this is from me, I only tried the first Penumbra, got stuck right at the beginning of the demo so never bothered. I wasn't enjoying to much the physical interaction anyway.

I must try this tho.

It seems super interesting environment wise, though it seems very linear... I'll probably get it just for checking out the sci fi environments though

Game is out btw, I'll be picking it up this weekend, anyone here tried it?

Its fucking great, and the story is Top Sci/Fi !

Looks pretty interesting, will probably pick it up once they add oculus support

If I hadn't such a back catalog I would have picked it up on release. Will wait to play couple other games and for the price to come down I. The meantime.

Quote from knj

Its fucking great, and the story is Top Sci/Fi !

Yeah I just finished this. First horror game ive played in a long time, and not chicken out due to the horror. Not to say it was not tense or scary, I just was so enthused in the environments and story I couldn't stop playing.

I want to play this.

But I think I lack the necessary balls.

Quote from holiestcows

Yeah I just finished this. First horror game ive played in a long time, and not chicken out due to the horror. Not to say it was not tense or scary, I just was so enthused in the environments and story I couldn't stop playing.

This is what makes a good horror game imo. I hate the cheap scare tactics some games use to replace anything resembling a story line or environment.

I loved amnesia, but my only gripe was that it felt too "on rails" at times. Is this any better?

I just finished it as well and honestly I wasn't sure I would finish it but damn those environments accompanied with the story. I'm also a complete sucker for deep sea <insert anything here>.

I have to say though, I feel that more than one time the monsters came in the way for the experience. I still want them in there but the direct face-to-face encounters were too frequent (and sometimes too long) in my opinion. I'd want more indirect encounters, you know like like the 'arm sticking out of a tight space to grab you' classic or just these other tricks that makes the player aware of the monsters presence and threat but not a fullblown confrontation.

Hope I didn't say too much!

I opened the editor today, seriously considering doing a small project based on episodes. So I'll make a short 15 min slice at first to see if people like it (and if I liked it) and then do more.

Seems like a pretty okey editor for being in-house made. It's pretty primitive but has all you need.

Totally agree with that notion @Sjonsson, monsters feel very out of place. I would have enjoyed it more just as a puzzle/exploration game than a horror game.

Still a great game though, asks questions few dare think about