Ten years have passed since Frictional Games’ seminal horror classic Amnesia: The Dark Descent traumatised the gaming world, and it’s been five since the release of its astonishing sci-fi horror Soma; finally, though, the Swedish studio makes its long-awaited return next week, this time revisiting its decade-old franchise with new series entry, Amnesia: Rebirth. Yet while that might initially feel like an unexpected regression, especially after the dazzling freshness of Soma, Frictional sees Rebirth as the latest evolutionary step in the studio’s journey – one it’s been on since its inception in 2007 – to create a very particular type of horror experience.
“The thing is,” explains Frictional’s co-founder and creative director Thomas Grip of the studio’s fascination with the genre, “in a shooter you shoot people, in a puzzler you puzzle things, and in a strategy game you strategise things, but there’s not really any activity that’s central to horror games… it’s the emotions that you evoke.
“I think that’s quite different from how you approach other genres and it adds so much more focus on how you structure narrative… and that’s a very interesting way of making games.”
It’s a development challenge Frictional has been attempting to perfect for over a decade now; however, since the acclaimed release of Soma – a game whose gut-wrenching moments of woozy existential terror lingered long after its unforgettable finale – the studio has focussed its ambitions still further, aiming to create narrative experiences that don’t just make players “think about things in a different way”, as Grip puts it, but, by carefully threading gameplay and story, makes them an “active force” in how events unfolds.
Amnesia: Rebirth – Story & Environments Trailer Watch on YouTube
“In some ways,” explains Grip, “Amnesia: The Dark Descent was a newer and better version of Penumbra [the studio’s earlier horror title], and, in some ways, I even think Soma is a better version of Amnesia. One of my annoyances when doing Amnesia was that the player didn’t confront the things we wanted them to confront when we first made the designs. With Soma though we went all in and wanted people [to really] confront the thematics… but it also felt like the gameplay didn’t hang as tightly together as it should have with the themes we wanted.”