The next game from the developers of Amnesia: The Dark Descent is sci-fi horror title SOMA for PlayStation 4 and PC, Frictional Games has announced.
“For the last three years, we have been working on a game called SOMA,” Frictional Games director Thomas Grip said on the PlayStation Blog. “All that time, this project has remained a secret — it’s a great relief to finally be able to talk about it. This game is by far the most ambitious and thrilling project we have ever undertaken.”
SOMA is a first-person sci-fi horror game. Players take on the role of a normal, “very exposed” person trapped in a world of nightmares. Grip dubs it a game about “exploration, survival, and immersing [the player] inside an interactive narrative.”
Development on Frictional’s previous games began with core gameplay before moving on to setting and theme. With SOMA, the developer “couldn’t let the themes be an afterthought.” The game discusses the subject of consciousness, posing questions such as “Can machines be conscious?” and “Do we have free will?”
“[These questions] quickly get very disturbing, and is ideal for a futuristic horror setting,” said Grip. “It is the kind of sci-fi that we want to make.
Grip promises the theme will be an “integral part of gameplay” and “not just fluff.” Part of this is represented through the game’s monsters, each of which are an embodiment of an aspect of the game’s themes.
“In order to survive the journey, you need to understand how they work and in the process take on extremely unsettling subjects,” Grip said.
SOMA is not just “another carnival ride of cheap scares,” according to Grip, but a game meant to “chill you to your core” and “confront you with questions about your very existence.” It is due out for PlayStation 4 and PC in 2015.
Watch the debut trailer below. View the first screenshots at the gallery.
