Penumbra Overture: Further Thoughts

I didn't want yesterday's post to get too long, I think I tend to have a problem with that, so I'm continuing my thoughts in today's post.

Atmosphere
I'm really enjoying the atmosphere of the game. It does a really good job using lighting and sound to convey a feeling of omnipresent threat. Frequently throughout the game you have to venture into spider infested tunnels, often you don't see anything, but you can hear crawling things all around you. The game thus far has taken place almost entirely in an old mine, which shakes and rumbles from time to time. The small earthquakes sound almost like the angry growls of a nasty monster deep in the mine.

Most of the mine is covered in darkness, it's a relief whenever you're able to spend time in areas that are more well lit. But even the well lit areas are still covered in rust and decay, serving as a reminder that you are very alone. Additionally the areas of light serve a nice contrast, making the dark areas even more frightening.

Saving
This really bothered me for a while until I figured out how the saving mechanism worked. Throughout the game you'll find ancient artifacts, that look almost like lanterns. When you click on one, it gives a brief description of the main characters thoughts as the artifact invades his head. I finally noticed that the save game files all seemed to be created around the same time that I clicked on the artifacts. After that I was able to relax because I didn't have to worry about whether my progress would be lost. There are also auto-save spots scattered around, and so far they have been very well positioned.

One thing that can always sap the scary out of a game is having to replay a particular portion over and over. So good check point placement is important. It's done an admirable job so far. There was one sequence where you have to move through a small spider infested tunnel, and you actually get chased by spiders. You can hear them hatching from their eggs and coming after you, and you have to run through the tunnel, and find ways to prevent them from chasing you. It was thrilling and terrifying, and it could have easily been ruined by poor save spot placement. I had to replay one section through four or five times, there was a rock rolling down an incline, Indiana Jones style, and it took a couple of tries to figure out where to run to get out of the way. Each time I died it placed me right before the rock puzzle, meaning I was only ten or fifteen seconds between attempts. If I had had to replay the entire tunnel sequence each time I would have quickly grown tired of it, and it would have lost all of its terror inducing goodness.

Plot
The plot is interesting so far, it seems to have some Lovecraftian influences, which is always a good thing in my book. So far a lot of the story has been told through notes left behind by other characters, which is always a good way to include other characters, but still keep the player isolated.

Anyway, I'm enjoying it so far. I'll post more thoughts as they occur to me.

Penumbra Overture: Initial Thoughts

Steam had a sale on the Penumbra games a week ago, and I picked them up. I'd had my eye on them, and just couldn't justify not buying them. So I'm a couple of hours into the first game, Penumbra Overture, and thought I'd share some thoughts I've had as I got into it. Yes, the game is three or four years old, but I think it has aged extremely well, and it's an indie effort, so I figure there's no excuse not to talk about it.

I'll steer clear of any spoilers, and being only a couple of hours in I'm not sure that I'll have much in the way of forbidden knowledge to impart anyway.

Overview
Penumbra is a first person horror adventure game. You solve puzzles, and sneak around avoiding monsters, explore the environment, and try to piece together what is going on. It's wonderfully atmospheric, with sound, music, and lighting all working together well to make the thing scary.

Interface
The interface works like a regular FPS, WASD to move around, and the mouse to look around, but when you look directly at something you can manipulate a hand or eye icon appears. You can then right click to look at the item, or left click to pick it up or otherwise manipulate it. Now this sort of thing has been done before, but what I haven't seen is how you have to use your hand icon to manipulate everything. If you want to open a drawer, you grab it with your hand and pull it open. Want to turn a crank? Grab hold and give it a spin.

Interacting directly with the game objects like this makes me feel more like I'm in the world, and it makes the physics based puzzles much easier. Instead of picking up and stacking boxes like a forklift (like most games), you pick up the box and can see exactly where it's going, and carefully adjust its position in the stack. The best part though is when you're opening doors. I've always hated in games that a door is either open, or closed, especially if it's a scary game. I want to slowly open the door and peek into the next room, which you can do very naturally in Penumbra. Or if you want you can quickly throw the door open. It heightens the suspense when you're trying to quickly close the door before the monster sees you, but you don't want to make a lot of noise.

Combat
Unfortunately the interface, while great for exploring, is not so good for combat. You pick up various weapons in the game, so far all I've found are things like pick axes, hammers, and push brooms. You swing these by clicking, and actually swinging the mouse around the screen. This works really well when you're just trying to beat down a door with your pick axe, but when you're fighting an undead wolf it's not nearly as enjoyable. I'll try to make an attack, and end up looking in a different direction, or try looking in a different direction to target the enemy, and end up swinging my weapon. It feels pretty clunky. Fortunately, as I did some last minute research to confirm that buying the game was a good idea, I noticed that people complained about the combat, so when it asked me how hard I wanted the combat to be I swallowed my pride and set it to easy. I am so glad I did. Overall though, it isn't too bad, I'm glad it's mostly a game of exploration and puzzle solving, rather than combat.

This post has gotten kind of long, I'm surprised at how much I've had to say about the game. I don't want to make this into an impenetrable wall of text, so I'll pick up on this tomorrow.