I wanted to create a thread to try and showcase the detailed process that Frictional Games (developers of Penubra, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, supervisors for Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs) undertook with their upcoming Science Fiction/Horror game SOMA. At the same time I wanted to also present the game's key features which I think many are/were unaware of as most probably do not quite understand what the game is about and what the developers are aiming for with it.
A lot of this was stuff I was researching in preparations for the actual game OT down the road, but wanted to present it in its own thread since most of it is probably a bit too superfluous for a Game OT. I also am taking care as to stay away from anything that could potentially be story spoilers.
Credit goes to the Unofficial SOMA Info Portal and its contributors to aggregating all the info.
Special Credit and Recommended Reading is the Frictional Games Blog. Containing development diaries, personnel bios and analysis of other games (like Alien Isolation)
What is SOMA?
Key FAQs
Development Timeline
When one thinks of a "5-year development cycle", the first thing that would come to mind of late is likely a negative thought, with many gamers associating such long development times with "AAA" games that have ended up way overbudget and often becoming too bloated or big for their own good.
Frictional Games however is not an "AAA" developer, boasting a small team of 14 employees who don't even have a dedicated office (last I checked, they all worked from their homes). In addition, the process to iterate their ideas is more complex than typical games, where changes can be made in a short period of time, SOMA's iterations however often took nearly a year to realize.
It also is worth noting that the team was likely not fully devoted to SOMA in the initial development years as they still were supporting The Dark Descent post-release, and Supervising A Machine For Pigs:
Frictional's Design and Development Foundations for SOMA
The developers have taken great care in designing and building out this game world. I will summarize the key points, but I would also suggest clicking on the links to be taken to their blog thoughts and more detailed descriptions.
The Five Foundational Design Pillars
TLDR: Frictional's latest game SOMA, a Sci-Fi Horror game, has been in development by a small studio who have taken their time to try to create something new and unique in the genre. Will be released on September 22 on PC and PS4. Now have some more Concept Art
A lot of this was stuff I was researching in preparations for the actual game OT down the road, but wanted to present it in its own thread since most of it is probably a bit too superfluous for a Game OT. I also am taking care as to stay away from anything that could potentially be story spoilers.
Credit goes to the Unofficial SOMA Info Portal and its contributors to aggregating all the info.
Special Credit and Recommended Reading is the Frictional Games Blog. Containing development diaries, personnel bios and analysis of other games (like Alien Isolation)
What is SOMA?
SOMA is a first-person sci-fi survival horror video game developed by Frictional Games, which intends to explore the themes of consciousness and identity. It is due for release on the 22nd of September 2015, and it will be available on Windows PC, Mac OS X, Linux and the PlayStation 4 console.
You take on the role of Simon Jarrett, who has found himself investigating the remote research facility PATHOS-II, a foreboding place which had been in complete radio silence prior to your arrival and where experiments had taken place with robotics and human consciousness. Existence within the complex has quickly devolved into a living nightmare. While not an Amnesiac, Simon is unaware of just what he has stepped into.
Key FAQs
- Developer is solely Frictional Games. Not a collaboration as was A Machine for Pigs
- Development started in 2010 before the release of The Dark Descent
- Soundtrack will be composed by The Dark Descent's and Penumbra's Mikko Tarmia
- No Combat System and players will be defenseless (standard since Penumbra Black Plague)
- No Active Inventory Screen. The game keeps track of items player has accumulated and they can be selected with hotkeys. There will also be a multipurpose tool available for many different uses.
- The player will have a light source to turn on/off
- Concerns about being able to interact with the game's world in SOMA stem from the decision made by The Chinese Room to severely reduce interactivity in Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs, a game for which they were the primary developers. Thomas Grip of Frictional Games has assured players that SOMA will allow them to interact with the environment in a way comparable with Penumbra and Amnesia: The Dark Descent.
- The sanity system in Amnesia: The Dark Descent was a "global" mechanic, in that its potential effects on the player were the same throughout the game. SOMA will include mechanics of a similar nature, but they will be more dynamic and "local", with different situations/creatures triggering different effects.
- Enemies in SOMA are not as event-based as they were in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. In Amnesia, the "danger music" would activate and remain active while an enemy was present somewhere in the level, which eventually taught the player to recognise when they were safe. In SOMA, the enemies are more dynamic and may appear at different times for different players, so the music won't be as clear cut as it was in Amnesia.
- An accompanying Film, "Depth", will be released congruently with the game.
- Fully mod-able on Day 1 on Steam for custom stories and content
Development Timeline
When one thinks of a "5-year development cycle", the first thing that would come to mind of late is likely a negative thought, with many gamers associating such long development times with "AAA" games that have ended up way overbudget and often becoming too bloated or big for their own good.
Frictional Games however is not an "AAA" developer, boasting a small team of 14 employees who don't even have a dedicated office (last I checked, they all worked from their homes). In addition, the process to iterate their ideas is more complex than typical games, where changes can be made in a short period of time, SOMA's iterations however often took nearly a year to realize.
It also is worth noting that the team was likely not fully devoted to SOMA in the initial development years as they still were supporting The Dark Descent post-release, and Supervising A Machine For Pigs:
2010
2011-2012
- Development of SOMA and its HPL3 engine began shortly before the Amnesia: The Dark Descent was completed and released
2013
- Hints that Frictional Games were working on a new title were scattered throughout the company's job vacancies and cryptic allusions in the gaming press. During this period, the as yet unannounced game was referred to simply as the "Super Secret Project"
2014
- SOMA was officially announced on the 11th of October 2013, preceded by roughly two weeks of teasing, and was given a tentative release window of "early 2015". It was affirmed by Frictional at this time that SOMA would be their most ambitious project to date.
- An initial Gameplay Trailer was revealed with the announcement.
The level showcased was specially made for the trailer and is not in the final game.
The character in the video is not the protagonist.- Two Live-Action videos were also released, "Vivarium" and "Mockingbird". These were inspired by SCP, and may tie-in with the film "Depth".
2015
- By mid-March, the game's development had reached Alpha stage, with a 5-hour version of the intended 8-hour game being in a playable state.
- By August, it was stated that the script was complete, all of the game's dialogue had been recorded and roughly three quarters of the game's content had been built (further recordings took place in February 2015).
- By September, the PS4 version of the game was up and running, with all features working as intended.
- By November, the game had reached "pre-pre-Beta" stage, and the core mechanics had been "set in stone". The game was playable from start to finish for the first time, clocking in at around 11 hours, and several more months of polish will see the game through to completion.
- By mid-December, the game had reached pre-Beta.
- The 14th of February saw the final piece of voice work to be done on the game, with the last line recorded being "Back off okay!"
- On the 13th of March, Frictional stated that if all goes according to plan, the Beta build for SOMA would be done "in 4 weeks", which would be mid-April, and beta testing would commence right after that. For the first time since development began, the final release of the game was "a clearly visible milestone".
- On the 13th of April, Frictional Games said that this would be their "last full day" before the Beta build is completed and sent out to testers.
- After a slight delay, the Beta build was sent out to testers on the 15th of April. On the same day, a blog post from Thomas Grip explained that the next deadline for SOMA's development is the final release.
- The final Beta test took place on the 22nd of May.
- The game's release date was revealed on the 29th of May: SOMA will be released to the PC and PS4 on the 22nd of September 2015.
- A new Gameplay Trailer from the final game was revealed.
- Two new Live-Action clips (possibly from "Depth") were released in the ARG which accompanied the new trailer, "Song" and "StructureGel"
Frictional's Design and Development Foundations for SOMA
The developers have taken great care in designing and building out this game world. I will summarize the key points, but I would also suggest clicking on the links to be taken to their blog thoughts and more detailed descriptions.
The Five Foundational Design Pillars
The Five Goals of SOMA1) Everything is story
First up, we want the player to constantly feel as if they are inside a flowing narrative. It is so common that a game is distinctly split into story and puzzle/action moments. We want to blur the boundaries here and make it impossible to distinguish between the two. Whatever the player does it should feel as if it is part of the story. We do not want to have sections that simply feel like blockers to the next narrative moment. From start to finish the player should be drenched in a living, breathing world of storytelling.
2) Take the world seriously
This leads us to the next point: that every detail in an environment is connected to the story somehow. Nothing should be written off as simply a requirement for gameplay or exposition. For instance, if you find an audio log you will be able to learn more about the story by pondering its placement alone. There should be no need to "double-think"; the game's world should be possible to evaluate on its own terms.
3) The player is in charge
When you invest this much in a setting, it's important to make sure that players feel connected to it. In order to this we need to put a bigger responsibility on the player. An environment quickly loses its sense of realism if it is extremely streamlined and does not allow you to make choices. The player must be the one that drives the narrative forward.
4) Trust the player
This brings us to the next point: that we trust players to act according to the story. We do not force players to notice events by use of cutscenes and similar, but assume they will properly explore the environment and act in a rational fashion. We simply set up situations and then let the player have full control over their actions.
5) Thematics emerge through play
Now for our last foundational design rule: that the game's thematics will emerge through play. SOMA is meant to explore deep subjects such as consciousness and the nature of existence. We could have done this with cutscenes and long conversations, but we chose not to. We want players to become immersed in these thematics, and the discussions to emerge from within themselves.
The "4 Layers" Approach to Narrative Design - This is a long read, and well worth it for anyone interested into the insights of Frictional's approach to story-based gaming.Goal 1: The feeling of playing a narrative
It’s important that the game is constantly drenching the player in storytelling. We need to make sure there is always a red thread of narrative running through the game. We don’t want you to go “Oh, here comes a puzzle section”, but to constantly feel as if you are being told an interactive story.
Goal 2: A coherently crafted world
When creating Amnesia our setting was basically just “Old castle where supernatural stuff happens”. This allowed us to get away with just about anything and explain it with “because, magic”. But in SOMA we are building a world that is supposed to be tied into the real world and to make sense. Our goal here is to make proper sci-fi and not just a magical fantasy with futuristic designs.
Goal 3: Gameplay with plenty of variation
As mentioned above, SOMA does not rely on a core gameplay loop and there is a very good reason for this: we don’t want the player to become too fixated on figuring out the game’s underlying abstract systems. We want players to approach the game from how it looks, sounds and feels. In order for this to work the game’s different scenes can’t have the same setup, as that would make you familiar with how everything works. Instead, we need to keep things fresh and avoid repeating ourselves.
Goal 4: Deep, disturbing themes that makes you think
A crucial design goal for us is to allow a deep exploration of what it means to be a sentient being. The first step towards doing this is to make sure that SOMA’s gameplay, plot, characters and setting reflect the subjects we want to discuss. If you approach the game in the right way, some seriously unsettling implications should be become clear. And here lies the problem. Are we getting through to you in the right way? Will the really interesting details just rush past you, or will you stop and give them some serious consideration?
Goal 5: A pervasive sense of horror
Finally, the game should be utterly terrifying. We do not want you to calmly stroll through the various environments; it must be emotionally tasking to progress. We want this blanket of oppression and fear wrapped around the entire experience. Sustaining this through eight or so hours takes some finesse – if we repeat something too often then you’ll get used to it and be able to second-guess the events. The build-up must take time, but without being dull, and there needs to be a nice rhythm of ups and downs throughout the journey.
Layer 1: Gameplay
Layer 2: Narrative Goal
- Coherency - The gameplay must fit with the game's world, mood and characters. There should be no need for double-thinking when performing an action; it should fit with what has been laid out by the narrative.
- Streamlining - It is important that the gameplay is not too convoluted and doesn't have too many steps. This is partly to minimize the chance of the player getting stuck.
- A Sense of Accomplishment - It is really easy to fall in the trap of doing “press button to progress” type of gameplay when the main goal is to tell a story. But in order to make the player feel agency, there must be some sense of achievement.
- Action Confirmation - When the player does something in the game, they must understand what it is that they are doing and why they are doing it.
Layer 3: Narrative Background
- Mystery - The most obvious and simple is mystery; that there is something unknown you want find out about. It's pretty easy to have environmental assets that constantly reminds the player of this - this sort of goal is also pretty easy to fit into a gameplay scene.
- Uncomfortable Environment - Another way is to give the scene a narrative reason for the player not wanting to stick around. The most trivial example of this would be a dark and scary environment; the player is scared and wants to leave. It could also be that the situation is awkward or emotional in a way that the player can't cope with and wants to escape.
- Character Conflict - Character-based conflict can also be used as a narrative goal. Walking Dead is full of this; what are really just fairly simplistic activities become engaging because of story reasons.
Layer 4: Mental Modeling
- Story Fragments - This means having narrative clues scattered through the environment which are stumbled upon while playing. An important note is that shouldn't just be the standard audio logs and diary entries. While it can consist of those sort of elements, it's important that they never mean a large interruption in the gameplay, and that they're found as the player goes through with the actions needed to overcome the obstacle. The act of collecting clues should not feel like a separate activity, but come as a part of the scene's main gameplay.
- Complementary Dialogue - There can also be dialog going on at the same time, giving context to the player's actions. Bastion uses this to great effect.
- Emotionally Significant Assets - If the the items involved in the gameplay have some sort of emotional value or a strong connection to the story, the player is much less likely to see them as abstract tools.
- Danger - There is something lurking about that constitutes a threat for the player. It's important that this threat is not some common occurrence that relies on twitch reflexes or similar, as it's just a normal gameplay element then.
- Goal-focused Mystery - This can mean that the player has the objective of solving a crime or similar. What we are after is that the player should see the game world as a place where important clues are to be discovered.
- Social Pressures - The player is amongst other people that they have to try and figure out.
TLDR: Frictional's latest game SOMA, a Sci-Fi Horror game, has been in development by a small studio who have taken their time to try to create something new and unique in the genre. Will be released on September 22 on PC and PS4. Now have some more Concept Art