Review Penumbra: Overture Developer: Frictional Games Publisher: Got Game Entertainment Genre: Action/Adventure Release Date: May 2007 Platform: Review by Ray Ivey July 17, 2007		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

The most innovative adventure title this year, Penumbra: Overture / Episode One comes from Swedish developers Frictional Games, and published by GotGame, the same folks who brought you the recent Scratches.

After a brief and intriguing introduction, you find yourself aboard a ship headed for Greenland.  You wake up in a small stateroom, and the scene that follows serves as a reasonably organic tutorial for the game's mechanics.  (More on those below.)

Soon you find yourself stumbling through the snow and ending up in a mysterious series of tunnels beneath the surface.  Something terrible obviously happened here, and it's up to you to figure out what.  That is, if you LIVE LONG ENOUGH . . mwhahahahaha!

The key element in any horror story is atmosphere, and in that department you have to hand it to Penumbra.  From the first moment in the hero's dank chamber on the ship to the snowy wastes of Greenland to the sinister tunnels discovers beneath the tundra, the environments in the game simply drip with foreboding and menace.

Added to the sense of dread in the tunnel system is that additional classic plus for a horror story, claustrophobia.  Spend a couple of hours exploring these doomed halls and you just may be jumping out of your skin to move around freely in brightly lit, safe surroundings.

Adventure game fans are notoriously rigid in their tastes.  Sorry, readers, no offense, but it's true.  Read any forum where adventure games are discussed and you'll see games get scolded spanked for being anything other than 100% pure, combat free point-and-click.  Therefore, I admire anyone who has the nerve to challenge these conventions and break out of the adventure game straitjacket.  It's been done several times in recent years, from the last two Broken Sword games to Indigo Prophecy to the several interesting adventure titles released on the Nintendo GameBoy DS. 

All that having been said, I don't know what was going through game developers' heads when he decided to build his game in true 3D with keyboard movement.  Horrors!  ("Horrors!"  Get it?  I kill me.) 

Yes, yes, time to drop a Xanax; the game is in 3D with keyboard movement.  In fact, it was built using an engine developed in-house at Frictional.  It comes preset with the classic WASD configuration, but it's easy to program it to respond to arrow keys, which I challenge any gamer to not understand. 

But there's more.  The crazy Swedes at Frictional really want to put you in the environment, so they made sure that the surroundings were highly interactive.  Back up in a crowded room carelessly, and you might knock a dangling light fixture and start it swaying, casting its gloomy light hither and yon.  Almost all of the objects around you can be manipulated, or at least picked up.  Interacting with this gameworld generally involves the mouse, making the game a definite keyboard/point-and-click hybrid.

What's even more daring (or exasperating, depending on your point of view) is that all this interactivity and movement feels rather clumsy.  This is not the smooth, terrain leaping running that you would experience in an Unreal or Doom game.  The plodding feeling of the physical interaction with the game world enforces a rather stunning feeling of realism.  And remember, sports fans:  Horror + Realism = Really Scary Horror!

This deliberately "clumsy" design truly adds a literalness and immediacy to your actions in the world of Penumbra.  Want to see what's in a chest?  You don't click on it and hear a magic "ding" as it opens . . . no, you actually have to "grab" it and pull the lid up, just like in real life.  So you're not so much pointing and clicking as you are pointing and dragging, pointing and pulling, pointing and lifting, etc.

If you go into the experience of Penumbra with an open mind, this extremely literal and realistic game dynamic can lead to a very heady and intense game experience that's quite rare. 

For example, early in the game you have to frantically open a hatch in the snow before you freeze to death.  This physical act, which would be highly simplified and streamlined in nearly any other kind of game, becomes a breathtaking race against time when you actually have to pound the damn thing with rocks and futz around with the hatch until you can figure out how to physically open it.  I've seen a lot of complaining about this sequence on different game boards, but I think the complainers are missing the point.  It's SUPPOSED to be hard.  Just imagine:  What if you really WERE freezing to death, dizzy and not thinking straight, and you knew you had to get past this seemingly locked and unfamiliar hatch to get to safety?  I'll bet you'd be clumsy as you attempted in your attempts to get the thing open.

This literal approach follows through the entire game.  To use a hammer to break some rotten old boards that are blocking your pathway, you actually have to raise the hammer and swing it down onto the boards.  Same thing when you find yourself attacked by a terrifying dog.  Or is it an undead dog.  Maybe a demon dog?

Oh my god.  Attacked by a terrifying undead demon dog?  You mean there's COMBAT in the game as well?!?  Sweet Jesus, is it the Apocalypse?

Let me back up a minute.  Yes, there's a seriously unpleasant dog.  There's also an assortment of other creepy things that don't so much like that you've invaded their chilly little warren of tunnels.  However, the "combat" in the game is handled with the same literalism and realism as everything else.  Early in your exploration of the caves, you hear (and possibly see) the sinister canine.  The game has a mechanic that helps you hide from danger (the screen actually changes color to indicate you are well-hidden).  You also have to take care not to stare directly into the eyes of the dog when you are hidden . .  . this can help it discover you and pounce!

The bottom line is, it's up to you whether to hide from the dog or engage him.  And if you do decide to fight him, all it takes is a little logic to figure out how to easily beat him with your trusty hammer.  (You have to do two fairly obvious things to accomplish this . .  if you are stuck email me and I'll tell you what to do.)  Plus . .  . and I know, I should have told you this immediately:  There are several different difficulty levels in the game, so you can play it on Easy if you don’t want any challenge in the combat portion of the game.

Let's talk graphics.  This is definitely a low-budget game, and considering that the environments look surprisingly good, if a bit drab and monotonous.  Particularly good is the use of light, which is in very short supply.  Whether it's the beam from your rapidly-dying flashlight, a wall torch, or a shaft of light pouring in from the surface, the dynamic light effects in the game are terrific and really compliment the scenery.

And, of course, the fact that you are in darkness most of the time adds even more to the game's scary atmosphere.  You're constantly faced with realistic choices:  Do I keep the flashlight on?  What if it runs out before I find more batteries?

The graphics, therefore, while not cutting edge by any means, do a chillingly effective job of creating the malevolent environments of the game.  The worst thing I can say about them is that the environments tend to be a bit monotonous.

How about the puzzles?  Once again, realism rules.  First and foremost, you get lots of important hints from the main character simply talking to himself.  You've got to pay attention to everything he says.  If, for example, he mutters, "Gotta find a way through that door," you'd better start looking for inventory items that will help you do just that.  You also find, in classic adventure game fashion, lots of scraps of paper, journals, letters, maps, and even instructions left by the men who at one time lived in these tunnels.  While the game has a pretty decent automatic journal, I would recommend taking additional notes as well.

Most of the puzzles can be solved with common sense and observation.  Need to clear a cave-in?  Look for a recipe for explosives, the look for the ingredients the recipe calls for.  Put them together, light a fuse and blammo!  Obstruction cleared.

Using this methodical manner will get you through the game's challenges.

The inventory system works pretty well, and you'll be filling it with batteries, medicine, tools and makeshift weapons.  There's even a "hotbar" feature which lets you quickly switch between flashlight, hammer, crowbar, etc.

The game is short, which makes sense since it is part of a series.  If short bothers you, remember that the game can be had for a slim $20.

Final Grade: B+ (find out more about our grading system)

If you liked this game, then Watch: Session 9

System Requirements:

Minimum System Requirements
System: Pentium 4 1.5 GHz or equivalent
RAM: 512 MB
Video Memory: 64 MB
Hard Drive Space: 800 MB

This review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link back to Just Adventure.