Frictional has a new 'SOMA-style' game quietly in the works

Official artwork showing a human and android separated by a glass screen in Soma.
(Image credit: Frictional Games)

Frictional has been busy scaring the wits out of us with Amnesia in recent years, but the studio hasn't forgotten SOMA, its rather excellent philosophical robo-horror from 2015. Although the Swedish developer is hard at work on Amnesia: the Bunker, the game's creative lead Fredrik Olsson recently let slip in a chat with DualShockers that a project in SOMA's heady mould is quietly in the works at the studio.

"We are still very much interested in doing more SOMA-style stuff," Olsson told DS, noting that Frictional's co-founder Thomas Grip is currently at work "on a bigger project that you can say has much more of this kind of philosophical stuff like you saw in SOMA". That would jive with a job posting from the company last month, which was explicitly looking for a narrative designer who "loves sci-fi and horror".

So fear not, fans of being horrifically mutilated by androids, your time will come. It'll probably just have to wait until after the next Amnesia game's decidedly robot-free WW1 horror gets out the door. That's set to be May 16 this year, after a "tough winter" at Frictional forced the studio to push the game back a little bit.

Look on the bright side, though, the Amnesia games have been pretty great so far, with the last one drawing praise in Leana Hafer's Amnesia: Rebirth review in PCG for being "one of the most effective and mind-bending horror games ever made, just like its predecessor". With any luck, the Bunker will live up to that stellar track record, and we can spend our time being irreparably traumatised by that while we wait for the pieces to fall into place on Frictional's upcoming SOMA-like.

Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.