Soma story trailer grapples with questions of consciousness

September hasn't been scary enough so far. Frictional has decided to fix that with the release of Soma next week, a horror game about exploration, bionics and human consciousness. In biology the soma is the nerve cell housing that contains the nucleus. The word is derived from the Greek word for "body", laying out the themes pretty explicitly.

Is the player character a consciousness housed in an artificial construct like the poor chap hanging out of the wall? Probably, but the full game is bound to dig further. It's a more interesting setup than Amnesia's "don't let the monster get you" premise. Soma is out next week, on September 22. Find out more about the game in our hands-on, and double check the system specs to make sure your PC can render those creepy underwater areas.

Part of the UK team, Tom was with PC Gamer at the very beginning of the website's launch—first as a news writer, and then as online editor until his departure in 2020. His specialties are strategy games, action RPGs, hack ‘n slash games, digital card games… basically anything that he can fit on a hard drive. His final boss form is Deckard Cain.