Frictional Games, the team behind gloomy scare-fest Amnesia: The Dark Descent, has another portion of pant-wetting horror headed your way this year – September 22 to be exact.
In fact, Soma will probably be even worse, because it’s set underwater; the only thing worse than being trapped in an abandoned castle with an unspeakable abomination is of course being trapped underwater with ALL the unspeakable abominations.
Okay, technically you’re in a deep-sea station, but that’s not all that much better. Judging by the trailer above, [ur=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frictional_Games]Frictional[/url]’s lost none of its talent for creating a memorable, creepy environment, and filling said environment with some very unsettling monsters. I get a real Alien: Isolation/Bioshock vibe from the teaser, particularly from the detail and care put into the industrial structures, computer terminals and shattered machinery. Getting that sense of place right has taken the team quite a while.
“Getting this right has been extremely hard as it’s not something you can easily iterate on,” writes Frictional on the PlayStation Blog. “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.”
But we’re creeping ever closer. As someone who has a crippling fear of deep water, Soma has just about the worst setting possible for me. I’m really looking forward to it.