New Game Design/Gameplay needed for dealing with Enemies in future games

[Lazoriss]

Frictional would certainly still be an indie company. More employees also means those same employees need to be payed, and they're not large enough of a company to focus on more than one project at a time. That puts a lot of pressure on them, because one flop of a game could seriously cripple them financially. SOMA took around five years to develop (maybe longer). That's a lot of time and money. For the record, Indie doesn't equal BAD. It's mostly related to resources. Many of my favorite games are by indie developers.

Monstrum is an indie game. But it's also very short, and the entire game revolves around the monster mechanics. There's no depth or story, just a fun, scary romp on an abandoned freight ship. It was also clever of the creator to randomize the map and creatures, increasing its replay value. Frictional would have to create this intricate sequence on top of the rest of the game.

I guess it depends on whatever project Frictional decides to work on next. SOMA had a very serious tone that focused on character, morality, and means of existence. There was a lot of heavy stuff, and even with a fantastic monster, it still might have distracted from that focus.
From what I've heard. there was considerable expectations from the fanbase for SOMA to be scary. I also know a lot of pieces of the game didn't even make it to the final product. How many hours and dollars worth, I don't know. But a lot of assets ended up being redone or retconned. This brings things back to how this IS an indie company. If they had the money and manpower, they could have had separate games. But Amnesia (and Penumbra) has given them these certain expectations, and a label as a horror game creator. This was brought up in Yahtzee's review of the game. It was like they were trying to mash two games together so they could please their audience, and still tell the story they wanted.