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⬅️ Previous capture (2023-01-29)

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Earlier, I talked about Danganronpa, and jokingly called it a psychological horror game. The truth is, I've never actually played a horror game before.

Well, today I completed my first one!

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• SOMA* is a horror game about Artifical Intelligence, people uploading their minds into computers, and how all of this could go horribly, horribly wrong. These topics are interesting to me as a CS student, which is why this game was recommended to me. At the same time, AI and mind-uploading are just naturally scary topics if you think about them for too long, so it totally makes sense to make a horror game out of it.

The game is set in an underwater research facility, which is a very unique environment. You start out close to the surface, with sunlight illuminating beautiful wildlife, but then gradually dive deeper and deeper into the abyss. *I had to lower the resolution and turn the texture quality all the way down to get a good framerate, but honestly, the blurriness works kinda well for an underwater horror game! :D*

SOMA did get very stressful towards the end, to the point where the monsters were too much to deal with, so I ended up consulting a walkthrough to find the escape routes in some places. Having to simultaneously figure out puzzles, and run away from fucked up biomechanical abominations, was not fun. I'm not sure if it's my fault for being a pussy or if it's the game's fault. Or maybe horror games are just not my thing.

Luckily, most of the game can be explored at your own pace, with monsters only occasionally challenging you. This is how the first 80% of the game is structured, and I much preferred this kind of setup. It's a shame that I had to ruin my immersion with a walkthrough at the end.

The whole experience for me was maybe a 7/10 or a 8/10, but I'm gonna pretend that it's my fault for being too scared - I'll give SOMA the benefit of the doubt and give it a solid 8/10.