Frictional Games, the videogame horrorsmiths responsible for the Penumbra, Amnesia, and SOMA games, is teasing something new—and yes, as you might expect, it looks creepy as hell.
The clip that appeared yesterday on YouTube, entitled Frictional_Next_Project.mp4, is actually the culmination of an ARG that, as laid out by Polygon, began last week with a small update to SOMA. Released on September 22, the patch "fixed faulty spam filters on Simon’s PC," according to the patch notes, which warned that "users may still receive suspicious correspondence due to treemail 0.1 filtering process issues."
Players immediately began checking Simon's email and quickly discovered a link to hotelsamsara.com, "a new investment opportunity promising an out of this world experience."
"Since time immemorial mankind has dreamt of the stars and what lies beyond," the site says. "Now LuxuryNext is prepared to deliver on that promise. Introducing Hotel Samsara. A place like no other. A promise like no other. Exclusive. Luxurious. In Samsara, wishes will come true."
More puzzles followed, as is the way with ARGs, eventually leading to this end-of-game teaser:
"Thank you so much for taking part in this 'little' journey we've all taken together," Frictional and Kepler Interactive said. "We really wanted to try and create something fun to show you a bit of what we've been working on. What we didn't expect is just how much you would impress us with your ability to all come together as a community and work with each other to solve everything we threw at you. Admittedly, we did have to increase the difficulty when we realized the scale of the team we were up against, so give yourselves a pat on the back for that.
"We can't tell you how much fun we've had watching you all solve each step and create top-tier level memes and inside jokes. It's been a pleasure, waking up excited every morning to check the Discord and seeing which rabbit holes you ended up falling into. Hopefully, you enjoyed it as much as we did."
All of Frictional's previous games on Steam have been self-published, so the involvement of Kepler—the publisher of games including Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Rematch, Sifu, and Pacific Drive, not a bad lineup by any stretch—is interesting. More pressing, though, is the obvious question: What is this all about?
On that, I cannot say. The Hotel Samsara website bears images seen in the teaser video and breathlessly positive comments about Luxury Next and someone named Felix, apparently some sort of can't-miss financial mastermind; the teaser itself throws sort of a BioShock vibe, with a very obvious throughline of neo-luxury gone very wrong. And yeah, that's blood. That's gotta be blood, right?
The only thing I can say for certain is that I get a very SOMA-like vibe off the whole thing: It hits me more like a psychological twist-up rather than an OHGODOHGODOHGOD screamer. Which is good, because as much as I love the Amnesia games (and I hate horror, so that's really saying something), I think the horrific mind-warp of SOMA is Frictional's best work so far. I say that admittedly having not yet played Amnesia: The Bunker, which fellow Frictional fan Ted Litchfield said "is an essential horror game and an inspired next step for the series" in his 93% review. Maybe my mind will change once I build up enough nerve to play it.
Some redditors believe they've found one or two SOMA connections in the teaser video, although it all seems pretty thin to me. One also discovered a hidden message in the audio portion of the clip, but it's not connected to the upcoming game—it's just cute. (And yes, I checked, it's there.)
There is, for the record, no kind of timeline on Frictional's next game, but I'm genuinely excited it's happening. If you want to keep up with future updates, you can sign up for a mailing list on the Hotel Samsara website.
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