Soma

released on Sep 21, 2015

Soma is a sci-fi horror game from Frictional Games, creators of the groundbreaking Amnesia and Penumbra series. The radio is dead, food is running out, and the machines have started to think they are people. Underwater facility Pathos-II has suffered an intolerable isolation and we’re going to have to make some tough decisions. What can be done? What makes sense? What is left to fight for? Soma is a sci-fi horror game from Frictional Games, the creators of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It is an unsettling story about identity, consciousness, and what it means to be human.


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This review contains spoilers

Barely a horror game, feels more like a sci-fi walking simulator.
The enemies AI is super dumb and in most cases can be outran, or simply you can just turn around a corner and hide again.
I like the use of audio instead of text to explain the context.
Really cool visual distortions.
The ocean parts are too long and feel unnecessary. They feel empty but not in the good way, more like in a boring way.

The sci-fi part is the best part of the game, it is a really cool concept and is fun to see how the same concepts is used in "Black Mirror" but in a different way.

Ahh noo, philosophy, my greatest fear!

Gonna gatekeep this to my deathbed

Horror games very rarely get under my skin, typically this is because they focus heavily on the body horror element of the genre which doesn't create scares for me personally. Soma feels like the complete opposite, much closer to the psychological horror end of the spectrum. The depth of the themes explored in this game are immense and incredibly enjoyable to experience through the course of the game. So much so that "horror" elements took a complete backseat for me and I was completely fine with that.

I'm unsure there is another game in the horror genre that offers anywhere near as much as Soma to a player who isn't typically scared by games, its undoubtedly one of the most immersive and thought provoking games I've played.