Frictional Games, the team behind cult scare-fest Amnesia: The Dark Descent, has released the brief snippet of gameplay footage from underwater horror SOMA that it showed off at E3 earlier this month.
”This showcases the player’s first encounter with a type of creature that roams this part of the game,” the team writes on its blog, ”and gives some hints on how to best deal with them. This clip is a bit shorter than we wanted it to be and therefore misses some build-up and is a bit hurried. But one minute was all we were allowed for the show. Still, hope you all liked it!”
The creature, in this case, would be a kind of horrible, shambling thing with eerie lights on its head that causes an effect not dissimilar from Amnesia’s sanity loss mechanic if you stare at it loo long. It’s a nice glimpse at the setting, but Frictional admits that the games they make aren’t particularly suited to on-stage demos.
”SOMA is a slow burn experience with a primary focus on the exploration of high-level concepts,” the team explains. ”Trying to showcase this is very different from showing off a game that is about exploring an environment or one that’s focused on a set of core mechanics - in those sort of games it’s much easier to find a short segment that serves as a good example. But for SOMA, that sort of segment really doesn’t exist.”
What you really need is a squeaky-voiced Youtuber to scream over the whole thing. The full blog post is quite interesting, actually, and shows how much care and attention Frictional puts into showcasing its game. Intrigued gamers don’t have too much longer to wait to get their grubby mitts on SOMA, either. The game’s set for a September 22 release.
