Amnesia: The Dark Descent made sure no talk of video game horror could go along without the mention of Frictional Games—the terrible, downright evil studio that not only dared deliver yet another horror game that completely lacked combat, but one that was so good and infectious that its stylings shaped the genre for almost a decade.

While we’ll probably never glimpse the terrible truth and come to an agreement on whether horror needs to opt out of combat entirely to be scary, Frictional’s follow-up title, SOMA, made a compelling argument that its exclusion is sometimes the only way of having your message heard. Unobscured by the whirls of revved-up chainsaws and the flashes of plasma cutters, it can still shine down there, in the quiet and the dark.

For SOMA, however, it’s not just important to hear what it has to say, but also how it says it. For a true barotraumatic dive into its thematic depths, take a look at the full version of this review, written by the ever-curious Drugoja in the Dreaming. Be warned that it will spoil all there is to spoil, so stick with me if you’ve yet to play the game.


“Play one Frictional title, and you’ve played them all!” would probably be the adage, if not for SOMA. As far as mechanical complexity is concerned, it’s as stripped back as Frictional’s ever been, serving as a natural progression and iteration of the team’s formula: take away more and more of the player's ability to outright remove the frights in their path and force them to deal with them without using force. In theory, this creates a feeling of helplessness not found in traditional survival horror and primes the player to engage with what’s on the screen in a different, less rigid, mechanically-minded way. The world becomes this real, unfamiliar place, where interactivity isn’t geared towards stuffing your backpack or blasting away at limbs and heads. Yet, remove one challenge of game development by taking an entirely different approach, and another will present itself—and if there’s something that Frictional didn’t learn from The Dark Descent, then they for sure had a cautionary tale in A Machine for Pigs.

For one, The Dark Descent still had enough resource management to be viewed as nothing more than a clockwork interaction between its mechanics if you were so inclined. It never explicitly got in the way of you tracing back up from and down again into Daniel’s insanity spiral, but the game stopped short of blending the two together. There were glimpses of it, but the need for health bars, depletable light sources, and meters to manage prevailed in the end—this is a video game, after all, a survival horror one, but something tells me Frictional wanted players to look a bit more beyond that.

The Chinese Room realised this and rid their sequel of tinderboxes and laudanum bottles, but instead of having the player use this newly freed-up attention on something important, they thought a separate window with a thesaurus would do just fine.

To that end, SOMA is a horror game with puzzle elements, in which you attempt to escape a haywire, underwater facility on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Threats lurk about, even if combat is absent. Physical contact between you and these monsters amounts to getting flung across the room and some spooky screen effects should it end fatally. Running, sneaking and puzzling your way out of danger remains the way of getting out of trouble, and an intricate plot backed by heartfelt character drama and eerily genuine voice acting guides you from one setpiece to the next.

It’s a dance Frictional knows well; one that SOMA comes so close to perfecting, were it not for the obvious criticism that’s been repeated since the very beginning with games of its ilk—it’s not scary. Rather, it’s frustrating and distracts from what’s more important. Any point at which whatever’s chasing you manages to remove those last few bits from your health bar is an almost pointless, immersion-breaking yank that pulls you out of the game. Indeed, an element solely there to make the video game more like a video game is what works against it the most.

It's as if horror games are afraid to entirely remove the fear of death. SOMA has a Story difficulty, yet it is a band-aid fix to a fundamental design issue. If a tangible threat is what was needed, why not make the very environment something to be afraid of? If the goal was having interactions that are more inspired by the story and setting, rather than the mechanics, why undermine it? I’m sure making the airlock an enemy, by giving it the ability to crush you to a pulp should you miss the warnings on the wall to your left, would have done wonders for making players pay attention and interact with their surroundings in a more natural way. The bottom of the ocean is a scary place, period, no sci-fi monsters needed. Almost as scary as the idea of beefing up the HPL Engine is to Frictional, I’d imagine, to a point where that kind of interactivity would be possible without squinting at blurry textures.

But, even with engine limitations, Frictional’s art and sound direction are exceptional. It is why SOMA’s rendition of the ocean floor is so inviting to get lost in and explore, even if it’s quite linear and teeters on the edge of falling into the motions of other games like it. But that begs the question: where does SOMA break the mould?


Without having to worry about any kind of resource management, you’re free to direct your attention elsewhere. SOMA’s monster encounters are a necessary evil with the way the game was designed; they suck, but can’t come close to ruining what’s so great about it. The puzzles are still there, of course, but the menial tasks of rerouting the power to the correct junction or finding the proper keycard can’t compare to the puzzle the game has been built around:

SOMA’s key themes, the dash of player choice there is, and the very plot are all interwoven with such great care and subtlety that they’d make a seamstress blush. The closer the game got to anything that’d obstruct it, the bigger my lament. In a roundabout way, It goes so far that it makes the lack of combat in The Dark Descent seem like an oversight—its narrative aspirations were never as grand, so laying even further into traditional survival horror could have had some merit.

The morality of SOMA is in the background, ready to creep up on you while your brain works away at the bits it presents. A "throwaway" line, a note on the wall, or an inconspicuous press of some button—it’s all towards a carefully constructed threefold message: whether ominous, hopeful, or just another pondering of whether androids dream of electric sheep, depends on you. No dialogue wheel, no alignment system, or distracting inventories; just you, some annoying monsters, movable boxes, and a choice that informs a different kind of fear.

Sans those annoying monsters, it’s the otherwise thorough departure from survival horror that allows SOMA to be filled with substance. All the frights—and everything else the game will make you feel—are in its world and the allegory it serves to paint. The psychological horror they’ve been talking about all these years; something a lot of developers have tried. Many may have succeeded, but a lot more missed what the focus should be and the design decisions at play to sharpen it up.

An international group of passionate writers and veteran reviewers, Summit Reviews aims to deliver ethical, professional, and in-depth critique across Steam and beyond.

[h2]Psychosoma, [i]qu’est-ce que c’est[/i]?[/h2] [i]Amnesia: The Dark Descent[/i] made sure no talk of video game horror could go along without the mention of Frictional Games—the terrible, downright evil studio that not only dared deliver yet another horror game that completely lacked combat, but one that was so good and infectious that its stylings shaped the genre for almost a decade. While we’ll probably never glimpse the terrible truth and come to an agreement on whether horror needs to opt out of combat entirely to be scary, Frictional’s follow-up title, [i]SOMA[/i], made a compelling argument that its exclusion is sometimes the only way of having your message heard. Unobscured by the whirls of revved-up chainsaws and the flashes of plasma cutters, it can still shine down there, in the quiet and the dark. For [i]SOMA[/i], however, it’s not just important to hear what it has to say, but also how it says it. For a true barotraumatic dive into its thematic depths, take a look at the full version of [url=https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/id/drugoja/recommended/282140/]this[/url] review, written by the ever-curious [url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/40848670-Drugoja-In-The-Dreaming/]Drugoja in the Dreaming[/url]. Be warned that it will spoil all there is to spoil, so stick with me if you’ve yet to play the game. [h3]Love the Body[/h3] “Play one Frictional title, and you’ve played them all!” would probably be the adage, if not for [i]SOMA[/i]. As far as mechanical complexity is concerned, it’s as stripped back as Frictional’s ever been, serving as a natural progression and iteration of the team’s formula: take away more and more of the player's ability to outright remove the frights in their path and force them to deal with them without using force. In theory, this creates a feeling of helplessness not found in traditional survival horror and primes the player to engage with what’s on the screen in a different, less rigid, mechanically-minded way. The world becomes this real, unfamiliar place, where interactivity isn’t geared towards stuffing your backpack or blasting away at limbs and heads. Yet, remove one challenge of game development by taking an entirely different approach, and another will present itself—and if there’s something that Frictional didn’t learn from [i]The Dark Descent[/i], then they for sure had a cautionary tale in [i]A Machine for Pigs[/i]. For one, [i]The Dark Descent[/i] still had enough resource management to be viewed as nothing more than a clockwork interaction between its mechanics if you were so inclined. It never explicitly got in the way of you tracing back up from and down again into Daniel’s insanity spiral, but the game stopped short of blending the two together. There were glimpses of it, but the need for health bars, depletable light sources, and meters to manage prevailed in the end—this is a video game, after all, a [b]survival[/b] horror one, but something tells me Frictional wanted players to look a bit more beyond that. The Chinese Room realised this and rid their sequel of tinderboxes and laudanum bottles, but instead of having the player use this newly freed-up attention on something important, they thought a separate window with a thesaurus would do just fine. To that end, [i]SOMA[/i] is a horror game with puzzle elements, in which you attempt to escape a haywire, underwater facility on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Threats lurk about, even if combat is absent. Physical contact between you and these monsters amounts to getting flung across the room and some spooky screen effects should it end fatally. Running, sneaking and puzzling your way out of danger remains the way of getting out of trouble, and an intricate plot backed by heartfelt character drama and eerily genuine voice acting guides you from one setpiece to the next. It’s a dance Frictional knows well; one that [i]SOMA[/i] comes so close to perfecting, were it not for the obvious criticism that’s been repeated since the very beginning with games of its ilk—it’s not scary. Rather, it’s frustrating and distracts from what’s more important. Any point at which whatever’s chasing you manages to remove those last few bits from your health bar is an almost pointless, immersion-breaking yank that pulls you out of the game. Indeed, an element solely there to make the video game more like a video game is what works against it the most. It's as if horror games are afraid to entirely remove the fear of death. [i]SOMA[/i] has a Story difficulty, yet it is a band-aid fix to a fundamental design issue. If a tangible threat is what was needed, why not make the very environment something to be afraid of? If the goal was having interactions that are more inspired by the story and setting, rather than the mechanics, why undermine it? I’m sure making the airlock an enemy, by giving it the ability to crush you to a pulp should you miss the warnings on the wall to your left, would have done wonders for making players pay attention and interact with their surroundings in a more natural way. The bottom of the ocean is a scary place, period, no sci-fi monsters needed. Almost as scary as the idea of beefing up the HPL Engine is to Frictional, I’d imagine, to a point where that kind of interactivity would be possible without squinting at blurry textures. But, even with engine limitations, Frictional’s art and sound direction are exceptional. It is why [i]SOMA’s[/i] rendition of the ocean floor is so inviting to get lost in and explore, even if it’s quite linear and teeters on the edge of falling into the motions of other games like it. But that begs the question: where does [i]SOMA[/i] break the mould? [h3]Fear the Mind[/h3] Without having to worry about any kind of resource management, you’re free to direct your attention elsewhere. [i]SOMA’s[/i] monster encounters are a necessary evil with the way the game was designed; they suck, but can’t come close to ruining what’s so great about it. The puzzles are still there, of course, but the menial tasks of rerouting the power to the correct junction or finding the proper keycard can’t compare to the puzzle the game has been built around: [i]SOMA’s[/i] key themes, the dash of player choice there is, and the very plot are all interwoven with such great care and subtlety that they’d make a seamstress blush. The closer the game got to anything that’d obstruct it, the bigger my lament. In a roundabout way, It goes so far that it makes the lack of combat in [i]The Dark Descent[/i] seem like an oversight—its narrative aspirations were never as grand, so laying even further into traditional survival horror could have had some merit. The morality of [i]SOMA[/i] is in the background, ready to creep up on you while your brain works away at the bits it presents. A "throwaway" line, a note on the wall, or an inconspicuous press of some button—it’s all towards a carefully constructed threefold message: whether ominous, hopeful, or just another pondering of whether androids dream of electric sheep, depends on you. No dialogue wheel, no alignment system, or distracting inventories; just you, some annoying monsters, movable boxes, and a choice that informs a different kind of fear. Sans those annoying monsters, it’s the otherwise thorough departure from survival horror that allows [i]SOMA[/i] to be filled with substance. All the frights—and everything else the game will make you feel—are in its world and the allegory it serves to paint. The psychological horror they’ve been talking about all these years; something a lot of developers have tried. Many may have succeeded, but a lot more missed what the focus should be and the design decisions at play to sharpen it up. [quote][url=https://store.steampowered.com/curator/41449676/]An international group of passionate writers and veteran reviewers, [b]Summit Reviews[/b] aims to deliver ethical, professional, and in-depth critique across Steam and beyond.[/url][/quote]