Now finally releasing the Amnesia: Collection on Xbox One, and decided to also spice it up with a little treat. We bring you the polar opposite of the Safe Mode: the Hard Mode!
Celebrating the 30th birthday of Simon Jarrett
As a small celebration we have collected 30 of some our favourite fan works of Simon, one for each year since his birth. In all honesty 30 is an arbitary number, a cutoff point to keep this post from being far too long. We love each and every one of your fan creations, as well as mods, meta commentary and even just coming together as a community.
Gregor Panič: Gameplay Programmer
Hi there! I’m Gregor and I’m a designer and programmer at Frictional, which means I’m responsible for all the fun events in our levels. Okay, maybe they’re fun just for us.
Max Lidbeck: Gameplay Programmer
I’m Max, and I do gameplay programming and design. I joined Frictional about a year and a half ago, and I’ve been working on one of our super secret projects since.
Q&A with Frictional writer Ian Thomas
On the last day of the cold January Will from Extra Credits sat down to stream SOMA, and for the first few hours of the game he was joined by his friend and Frictional employee Ian Thomas. Ian worked on scripting, coding, and level design for SOMA, and is now the Story Lead on one of Frictional’s two upcoming projects. During the stream he answered some questions from the viewers, ranging from what type of pizza he thinks Simon had in his fridge, to ways of minimising dissonance between the player and the character in a narrative game.
What is SOMA’s Safe Mode?
Tomorrow we will be releasing SOMA for Xbox One and along with this comes Safe Mode. This is a new way of playing the game that will also be available via Steam and GOG at the same time.
SOMA – Two Years Later
It’s over two years since we released SOMA, so it’s time for another update on how things have been going.
The Illusion of an Analog World
There is something about unclear options which make choices a lot more interesting. This post goes into the reasons behind this, and various ways of achieving it in games.
Gaps of the Imagination
We don’t perceive every single piece of information around us. Instead we must constantly fill in blanks in our knowledge to properly create a mental image of the world. This processes of filling in gaps is really important to understand and to exploit when crafting games.
Planning – The Core Reason Why Gameplay Feels Good
In this post I dig into planning, and how it is a fundamental part of what makes a game engaging. Planning affects many aspects of what is so special about games and why we enjoy playing them. This post will go over the reasons behind this, and explains why planning is so important for narrative games.
