As the creative minds behind Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Frictional Games know a thing or two about instilling a sense of nerve-shredding terror into its game, so it’s with great excitement (and fear) that we bring you the release date of the studio’s new IP, Soma.
Haboring a similar aesthetic to Visceral Games’ Dead Space, the game is due to release for PlayStation 4 and PC on September 22, and the studio has released an extensive, spine-chilling trailer to prove it. It appears that the game is build around a first-person perspective where players are tasked with searching through the confines of the eerie PATHOS-2 research facility. Because if there’s one thing we’ve learnt about research facilities in space, it’s that they often devolve into anarchy sooner rather than later – think Event Horizon or the seminal Alien.
The development of Soma was not without its problems, however. Frictional Games first began constructing the space-set scarefest in 2010, and the company’s Thomas Grip spoke candidly about the arduous five-year stint, which was prolonged due to trouble perfectly the title’s themes.
“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.”
Soma is shaping up to be an exercise in pulse-pounding horror, and we can’t wait until Frictional Games’ demented new title arrives on PlayStation 4 and PC on September 22.
