Frictional Games have released Penumbra: Requiem for Windows:
Penumbra: Requiem is an expansion to Penumbra: Black Plague and is to be considered an epilogue to that game and not as a new episode in the Penumbra franchise. The main goal with Penumbra: Requiem has been to focus more on the physics puzzles and see how far the current engine could be taken. This has made Requiem into a game that focuses more on gameplay and puzzles than the previous Penumbra instalments and a game that is more experimental in nature.
Although having a strong emphasis on puzzles the game still features a dense atmosphere, a trade mark of the Penumbra series. In Overture the goal was to induce strong fears from isolation, in Black Plague a main theme was paranoia and Requiem does its best to deliver a nightmarish and feverish atmosphere. Penumbra: Requiem is an attempt to deliver a fresh and rewarding experience and not just some rehash of previous material.
Mac OS X and Linux versions are due shortly. What I love about Frictional’s games is their light subject matter: isolation, paranoia, fever, terror, murder, madness. What about fluffy things? Without razor teeth.
In the meantime, read my review of Penumbra: Overture and then sit in the darkness, brooding, isolated, waiting for my review of The Black Plague.
Serious games are a tricky business. It’s easy to fall short of the emotional impact needed to engage the player. It’s easy to be pompous or arrogant or boring. Even more difficult is then to entertain.
Penumbra: Overture is a first person horror puzzler from Frictional Games, developed on the back of their tech demo Penumbra. Following the story of Philip, you venture forth into the wilderness after receiving a letter from your long forgotten father:
Like all good nightmares, Philip’s begins with something all too real - his mother’s death. The days following the funeral are characterized by nothing, save for an incessant feeling of abandonment. Until, that is, he receives a letter from a dead man.
Philip’s father left before he was born, taking his reasons with him. Now, here he is, opening up the door from beyond the grave. That door leads to more questions, and those questions lead to Greenland. Philip follows the clues - they’re all he has left.
On leaving the final signs of human civilization behind him, in search of the location mentioned in his father’s ambiguous notes, Philip wonders if he’s left some part of his humanity behind as well. Soon, that will be the least of his fears.
Now, Philip needs your help. He’s found an inexplicable metal hatch, in the middle of a frozen wasteland. Inside, is something yet more unfathomable.
Continue reading ‘Penumbra: Overture’
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