Interview: Penumbra Collection

Written by: Lewis Denby Posted: 11th March 2009

Lewis spoke to Jens Nilsson Co-founder, sound director, level scripter at Frictional games, about the recently released Penumbra Collection.

When I was tasked with reviewing the Penumbra Collection, I found myself in something of a quandary. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but when considering and analysing its elements in the way a traditional games critic has to do, I had to concede to a less than brilliant score. So, I guess, apologies for that first and foremost. Was this something that crossed your mind at any point when making and delivering the games?

As a low budget game creator we always take into account the costly sides of creating a game and what effects the limitations of budget will have on final reviews scores and gamer reception. We work very hard to create a game that represents our ideas of what is a truly scary experience, giving the player a lot of challenges while not relying on the old and tested methods of being a monster bashing hero.

We concentrate on working as much as possible with story, interaction, sound and just a general urge to create a dense atmosphere that hopefully will drag the player into the game. It should, and often is, possible to receive good reviews and nice feedback regardless of, for example, technical and costly graphical content. A parallel to the world of films would be to review a Hollywood horror flick, say “Alien”, on the same basis as you review a low budget horror film like “Blair Witch Project”.

In short, yes we think and plan a lot on how to make the best game possible within the budget that we have. We try to be creative and unique in order to avoid more costly design choices (let the story and sound tell about a monster, but leave the actual visual representation out of the game and allow for the player to imagine it). Our final hope is always to receive reviews that take into account what sort of game it is and review it with similar games in mind as a measuring tool.

As a small ending note, to put the size of the project into perspective, is that the total development cost for all the three games in the Collection was about 110,000 GBP. Small downloadable games for something like XBLA usually costs at least double that.

Following on from this, what did you think of the reception Penumbra received? Was it as expected? Did you learn anything from the public and critical response that you applied to the later episodes, or that you'll be applying to your new project?

Very happy with the reception! Reviews and gamer feedback has overall always met and exceeded our expectations, it has been truly amazing at times when we have received such great feedback.

The choice to do episodes was based on two needs, one that we did not have enough money to do a full (in truth not even an episode) game and the other to be able to do a game that was changed and improved upon based on our own experience as well as feedback from gamers and media. We learned a lot after each episode and applied changes accordingly. Gamers feedback was internally discussed at length and then if we believed it would improve the game we implemented it as well.

An example would be the fighting system in Overture, when the game was released we were quite worried it would not work out so well. We had tried really hard to create a game with cumbersome fighting, with a design that would encourage the player to sneak and use wits instead of fighting. From the testing feedback we had noticed that the gamers foremost approach was to fight and we tried to adjust this as much as we could in the last month of development. At release we weren't sure we had done it right and then when the gamers and media in general didn't like it, we dropped it for the next episode. A decision that was also very positive as it turned the game more into a non-violent horror game that closer matched our ideas.

The big hype about Penumbra seemed to be the 'realistic' physics engine, but it's something that, after a few minutes of getting used to, I didn't even think about for the rest of the game. I suppose that's as good a praise as any. Was this intended to be a real feature, something more incidental, or simply a way of skyrocketing the immersion factor?

The very first idea behind the physics came from the budget limitations. Thomas (co-founder & programmer) was thinking about how to solve the problems with animations and at the same time having dynamic objects. We wanted to have a game were the player explored the rooms by opening drawers and picking up items inside of them. Traditionally this would mean that the player click on a drawer and an animation is played opening it, the items inside would then have to be part of the animation or solved in some other way. This would be quite an undertaking for us, so he figured that perhaps he could use the physics for this. He had just finished implementing the physics engine, something that from the start was only meant for us to be able to have dynamic objects lying around in the levels. But instead he came up with a design that would allow for all the physics interaction that you can do in Penumbra.

Then as we noticed how well it worked for our type of game we concentrated and reworked the game to make this a central feature of the gameplay. The immersion from it was a huge advantage when creating a horror game.

Though borrowing from a number of horror stalwarts, Penumbra's story is fantastically told, with a brilliant script and some thoroughly intriguing characters. How important do you view narrative within single-player games?

Very important, we originally had the intentions to create a game with an extensive story. Fortunately for us we came in contact with Tom Jubert quite early and he has worked with us very closely on all of the Penumbra games. Having a professional writer adds tons of layers of story otherwise not possible and is also a source of new ideas. A writer might not fully take into account the technical limitations, allowing the writer to write story and ideas that are perhaps not possible to do exactly as intended in-game. But it allows for discussion and from that you get creative ways and variations on how to implement the ideas to get the same (or as close as possible) result, which in the end can affect both gameplay as well as driving techniques to tell stories in games forward.

Did you enjoy working on Penumbra as an episodic release? Is it something you really wanted to do, or was it a result of budget / time restrictions?

Yes and no. It was mainly a budget decision but with the nice side effect of getting feedback from actual players. Testers are not that reliable when it comes to actual “game enjoyment feedback”, they are doing a job (paid or for free) and as such they are not really experiencing the game in the same way as an actual player. Hence, you won't get any actual feedback on the game until it is released and with that in mind making an episode can be fun as well as productive.

But releasing an episode is much the same as releasing a game, so when it is out you don't really get that feel of enjoyment that the game is out for people to enjoy. You are already so far into working on the next episode that there is no time! Currently we are working on a new full game, half the enjoyment at the moment comes from the pure knowledge that we are working on a game and when it is done, it is done.

Personally, to do an episodic game again it would have to be done a bit differently. Perhaps by the time you release the first game you already have the next 3 episodes more or less ready, so that during 6 months or so you can release a 3-4 hour long episode each month. I think that would make it a more interesting working experience as well as a more coherent end user experience.

You're currently beavering away at a new project. What can you tell us about that?

It's a survival horror game in a more true sense than Penumbra. We are concentrating more on creating a game where there is a better flow in the gameplay, where we tie puzzles and other gameplay elements closer together. In Penumbra it is more divided; you have the sneaking and monster concentrated areas that are then leading to areas where you are presented with larger puzzles to solve without any danger lurking over you. For the new project we want to have a world with short puzzles that are more solved on the fly, linked to the overall world where a monster might show up at any time.

There will be a bit more usage of fighting in the game compared to Penumbra, but the goal is to have a game about exploration, story and ambience in favour of mindless monster bashing. The game is set in the 18th century so the weapons options will be quite limited, or rather it's not going to give the player much option in regards of point and shoot.

There will be a continuation on exploring the means of story telling in games. Nothing fancy, but the core idea is to go as far as possible in always letting the player be free to move about. So, no locking the player in position, cut scenes or other control hampering actions. Where the player can decide how much story he wants, he can walk away from a dialogue or he can explore more carefully to find more details about events that are only told at a glance in the main story.

What do you think of the survival horror genre? The traditional form of the genre seems to be increasingly excised in favour of new ways of telling horror stories within games. Penumbra is distinctly survival horror in its truest form, but it's delivered more like a cross between a FPS and an adventure game. Do you see the genre progressing in this direction, or is there still a place for the more traditional form?

Genres do have a tendency to get narrow and overcrowded with variations of the same type of game. The survival horror genre does have that problem too, with for example the third person perspective remaining a dominant point of view. The current development seems to be going in an action oriented direction and while this works for creating survival horror we tried to go in a different direction with Penumbra.

If you by ‘traditional form’ mean more combat-focused gaming with puzzles as a variation, then for sure that form is definitely going to stay. Many other genres based on an action oriented gameplay also use that formula, combining fighting with some basic puzzle solving from time to time. Given that, there is no reason really to think that the horror genre would diverge from that.

We are striving a bit towards a more traditional survival horror game with the next title. We had problems describing Penumbra to the media and players. With too much adventure elements and a perception of it being ‘Adventure’ we feel that many potential players where lost and many players (adventure gamers) where angered due to the first person and action oriented gameplay from time to time. We strive to polish and streamline the next project so that there is a clearer picture of what the game is supposed to be.

What are your ambitions for the future with Frictional?

Modest. We are perfectly content at being a small company, currently four full-time that works closely with external contractors that come in during periods when their expertise is needed. This keeps the costs down and makes it possible for us to continue working on projects with a bit higher risk when it comes to how much data is available for the success of that type of project. We hope things will go well so that we can slightly increase the full-time staff. Being only four is a bit of a risk when that represents 25% of the company should anyone get sick or perhaps get a new job.

On the creative side we are set to exploit the knowledge from the Penumbra games in our new project. With goals and hopes that go well beyond anything we have done before. With the new technology we have developed we are set to be able to deliver that much more of a game than what the increase in funds on their own would allow for. Or so we hope!