Amnesia dev's latest to "revitalise" horror at a "gut-chilling level"

Amnesia developer Frictional Games hopes new release SOMA will introduce gamers to a new kind of fear.

Frictional lead Thomas Grip has said that SOMA will be a different kind of horror experience than Amnesia: The Dark Descent.

"I really hope that people will feel it is a fresh experience. There have been so many games now that are just about running way from monsters, and I think a lot of player are getting desensitized to that," Grip told GamingBolt.

"So our goal is for SOMA to also feel like a revitalization of the horror genre, just as Amnesia did. Will it be as scary? I do think so! Not just in the same primal 'run and hide in closets'-fashion that Amnesia evoked, but at a more deeper more psychological and gut-chilling level."

Amnesia itself was quite different from what was at the time the standard horror experience in games. Grip said that SOMA's enemies will once more be unlike those found in other titles.

"The monsters are not really enemies in the sense they are in a game like Resident Evil, or even Outlast. You will see very little of them, and we are very careful not to overuse them," he said.

Most creatures will only appear in one or two specific locations, he continued, and they won't always be threats - the player will sometimes need their help to progress.

"We hope this gives a sense of paranoia you are unsure how to approach monsters you encounter," Grip explained.

"Finally, the creatures all also have different 'rules' you need to figure out. Some cannot be looked at, others only go by sound and so forth. So not only do you not know if the creature is dangerous or not, you also need to make sure you engage them in the right way."

Holy balls, that sounds amazing. The full interview goes into greater detail on the game's systems and Frictional's ambitions, so do click through above.

SOMA is coming to Linux, Mac, PC and PS4 in 2015.