We will see a new game soon?

[gbee]

Spare a thought for those of us Linux PC gamers who don't really care for horror games but who still want something decent to play.

I loved Penumbra because it was different, well designed and it occasionally rewarded the player by letting them solve puzzles in their own way. Especially those puzzles involving construction, reaching places through manipulation of objects. Yes, I even loved Requiem.

I played Amnesia on the strength of Penumbra and though it was technically competent the gameplay was more restrictive and the story more 'horror' based. It made less use of the interaction that made Penumbra fun. Altogether I enjoyed Amnesia but I would not want to play it or another game like it again. I almost gave up on Amnesia for the same reason I gave up on Doom 3, the relentless march towards ever darker and more claustrophobic situations just gets boring for me. A lack of variety, a lack of respite and balance and most importantly no clear motivation for going forward into certain death/oblivion.

I want to see what else Frictional can do, something different but maybe building on the interactivity that was, to me, important to their first game but with more variety and positive reason to move forward and explore the game world. I keep thinking back to the very first time I played the original Tomb Raider and the constant wonder about what I might find around the next corner and how that contrasts with a game like Amnesia where instead I didn't really want to find out what was around the corner - I couldn't even explain why I should want to progress ever deeper.