SOMA
SOMA is a sci-fi horror game from Frictional Games, the creators of Amnesia: The Dark Descent. It is an unsettling story about identity, consciousness, and what it means to be human.
The radio is dead, food is running out, and the machines have started to think they are people. Underwater facility PATHOS-II has suffered an intolerable isolation and we’re going to have to make some tough decisions. What can be done? What makes sense? What is left to fight for?
Enter the world of SOMA and face horrors buried deep beneath the ocean waves. Delve through locked terminals and secret documents to uncover the truth behind the chaos. Seek out the last remaining inhabitants and take part in the events that will ultimately shape the fate of the station. But be careful, danger lurks in every corner: corrupted humans, twisted creatures, insane robots, and even an inscrutable omnipresent A.I.
Game Discussion
Steam User 147
People aren't lying, it's one of the best sci-fi stories ever made in any medium. Just play it.
Steam User 76
The narrative that drives this game; It made me think about existential questions again, it's a horror game different from the flashy mold.
Steam User 62
Spawned in to the game for the first time and decided to put my entire apartment in my toilet. I clogged the toilet so hard that the game froze. 10/10 would take that apartment sized dump again.
Steam User 75
I'd choose this absolute masterpiece over any triple A title from the last decade now.
I love when my game is strictly storytelling and nothing more, nothing less. The SOMA team really, uh wehat do the kids say nowdays... cooked with this one.
Steam User 47
One of the best psychological horror games out there and one of the greatest stories in gaming. A classic.
Steam User 35
I just finished Soma last night and found myself laying in bed, thinking about what it meant to be human and the choices we make. This is one that will stick with me for a long time and definitely on my top 10 list.
If you like games with heavy philosophical elements and bittersweet endings, give Soma a try. It’s definitely more story driven with some horror sprinkled in. But the puzzles are simple, the creatures are easy to deal with, the environments are hauntingly beautiful, and the sound design is on point.
Steam User 35
I just watched the first trailer and went into this completely blind. It is one of the best sci-fi/psychological horror stories ever created. I mean out of movies, books, TV shows it's just one of my absolute favorite story driven narratives. I'm not saying the gameplay is groundbreaking by any means, but the journey is just something you have to experience. This is one of those hidden gems where both the Recent and Overall Reviews being Overwhelmingly Positive is absolutely justified a decade after its release.
***SPOILER - FOR THOSE WHO HAVE COMPLETED THE GAME ALREADY - SPOILER***
This game literally had me ponder and question what it is to be human in a way I haven't experienced since reading Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The creature/wretch/fiend created by Victor Frankenstein was the amalgamation of body parts from several dead corpses yet was ultimately brought to life as a blank slate, needing to learn language and social interactions by observing others as well as teaching himself to read. He was seen as a monster yet he experienced emotions, was aware of his existence, and was able to reason just as any human could. Interestingly enough Soma being the Greek word for physical body exemplifies this argument: your body is not what makes you who you are. This game pushes the theory beyond just your physical being and makes you question if your thoughts and memories are what make you you. If so, and if those things can be copied and pasted to various formats, where is your soul? Did it leave this plain of existence with the original? Is it kept bound to this realm so long as there's some duplicate of you roaming around? Or is it fragmented amongst the various copies of yourself? What an amazing theory told in tale...