Forum Overview :: Gamerasutra :: Penumbra: Overture, the tech demo that grew a game

[quote name="Schadenfreude"]I guess a lot of you already heard about this, but I just found out yesterday, and there seems to be no mention about it in the forums, so here it is... So there's this company called <a href="http://frictionalgames.com/">Frictional Games</a>, which has been working on a game engine heavily focused on physics-based puzzles. Yes, the developer's quotes bring back <a href="http://www.oldmanmurray.com/longreviews/726.html">some disturbing memories</a>, but they drew my attention anyway when they said the thing would take the shape of a horror game. The game eventually came out and it was called <a href="http://frictionalgames.com/penumbradownload/">Penumbra</a>, and it was actually quite good. So much so, these guys got a lot of requests for turning the 1-hour-long tech demo into a full-fledged game. Well, yesterday they announced that the first episode of the <a href="http://www.penumbra-overture.com/">Penumbra: Overture</a> trilogy will be hitting shelves next March 30. There's <a href="http://www.penumbra-overture.com/demo.htm">a demo</a> to try out. The demo is over in about 30 minutes (including some pretty annoying loading times) and you don't get to fight any monsters (which is too bad because <i>that</i> might be a pretty important test for this engine, then again the game is supposed to be more of an adventure, so who knows), but everything you <b><i>do</i></b> get to see and do comes out just fine. This might end up being a really good horror game. Well, that's that for now. Go <a href="http://www.penumbra-overture.com/demo.htm">give it a try</a> if you're into this sort of thing.[/quote]