‘Soma,’ A Horror Video Game From The Deep
Frictional Games/SteamSoma takes place in a underwater research facility.
Like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Soma is a survival game that was released by Frictional Games in 2015 — but it has a very different setting. Instead of a castle in Europe, the game takes place in an underwater research facility called PATHOS-II.
The story is set in the future after a comet strike kills every human on Earth except for the crew of PATHOS-II. The protagonist, Simon Jarrett, is working at the facility under mysterious circumstances. Like in Amnesia, players have to solve puzzles and find clues to piece together the story while avoiding mutated monsters.
PlayStation/YouTubeOne of the mutated monsters Soma players must avoid.
“Soma is an ambitious work of science fiction which grapples with fundamental questions of consciousness, identity, and the relationship between the mind and the body,” one reviewer wrote for IGN in 2015. “It feels weighty but never dry or ponderous thanks to an engaging and surprising story. But Soma is also a work of survival horror, and in this regard slightly less successful.”
Regardless of its shortcomings in pacing and traditional horror elements, the game is considered one of the scariest video games of the last decade due to the psychological fear it invokes.
