Frictional Games’ active fanbase have known for some time that a new game was around the corner. The Amnesia and SOMA developers have been teasing their project via a seemingly active ARG on their dedicated Discord well before the page NextFrictionalGame.com was discovered in mid-December. However, the team of dedicated horror developers is beginning to point to their upcoming project more directly, with Frictional Games’ website pointing directly to the potential rabbit hole.
First noticed by Rock Paper Shotgun, Frictional Games’ main page now lists the project under their ‘Games’ dropdown:
The site it redirects it to, NextFrictionalGame.com is a bit of a puzzle from the get-go. With the exception of the company’s socials at the bottom of the page, all we are able to see is seemingly a beating… something. Is it a cell? Is it a virus? Is it something totally different? Honestly… it’s hard to tell, and you should let us know in the comments what you think it is.
What is linking this to an ARG… well, not much. With no official announcement from Frictional Games, the community is combining the general lack of communication with the studio, paired with the developer’s prior history in announcing projects (Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs) via ARG. In any case, the website and the broader Discord community will be worth keeping an eye on as 2020 gets into the swing of things.
Frictional Games had previously teased two new games roughly a half-decade ago, stating they planned to “tone down the horror elements and make sci-fi narratives more prominent.” SOMA would eventually take a turn doing this, adding in a mode that would make the various monsters passive observers — hyping up the creep factor and downplaying jump scares. The projects were delayed to work on fine-tuning new technology.
And there’s no wonder that fans are excited — Frictional Games is known to be the leaders in an ever-popular Horror genre, with Amnesia and Penumbra arguably being the two games that kicked off the Let’s Play horror scene.
There’s no direct indication on what this next project is yet, what it may be called, or what platforms we can expect it on. But if you are in the mood to go through the studios’ other projects, feel free to check Penumbra, Amnesia, and SOMA — the latter two are actively available on most current generation platforms. We will keep you up to date as more information about this title becomes available.
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