Frictional Games Reveals New Horror Game That’s a Spiritual Successor to Soma
Ontos has been revealed as the next major project from Frictional Games, which previously delved deep into the intersectional human consciousness and technology with Soma. While not much has been revealed about Ontos yet, it seems to be exploring similar themes of identity and transhumanism, but with much greater visual fidelity and apparent narrative complexity.
Science fiction is often used for little more than aesthetic purposes in games: heroes might shoot lasers instead of bullets, drive spaceships instead of cars, or fight aliens rather than enemy humans. But few titles make full use of the narrative opportunities offered by the science-fiction genre. This is not so with Soma, a horrifying and unnerving narrative that makes you distrust your own reality. Soma explores the terrors of far-future tech, rooted in fundamental philosophy and theoretical science, and it looks like Ontos is planning to do the same.
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What Is Ontos, the Next Game from Soma Creator Frictional Games?
- Ontos release date: TBD 2026
The Ontos trailer opens with a bizarre and upsetting sight: a machine composed of mice emitting a frantic human voice. The voice insists that it can “explain what’s going on,” strongly implying that this device has, in fact, entrapped the consciousness of a human being. As the trailer continues, we get glimpses of several strange and shadowy characters, while an imposing-sounding man waxes about the meaning of existence. He tells the person he is addressing, presumably Ontos‘ protagonist, that their father was once on a mission to answer these impossible existential questions, and that in order to “understand” such questions, one must push the boundaries of their reality.
The trailer is intentionally vague, but it gestures toward the same themes explored in Soma. Players will assume the role of Aditi, a woman who is led to the lunar hotel Samsara by a message from her deceased father. While there, she will encounter a colorful cast of strange and terrifying NPCs conducting “Experiments,” which Frictional Games describes as complex puzzle-box setpieces, all designed to lead Aditi closer to the truth about her past and existence.
Samsara is a Buddhist term describing the cycle of life and death, to which all mortal life on Earth is bound before Enlightment and Nirvana.
What Will Ontos’ Gameplay Be Like?
The Ontos reveal trailer focuses primarily on cinematics and in-engine footage of the game’s environments, but a press release from Frictional Games, published just after Ontos was unveiled at The Game Awards, sheds a bit more light on its interactive elements. Speaking about Samsara itself, Frictional Games said this: “Every door can be opened, and every corner of the station has secrets that can lead to a deeper understanding of the story, clues on how to solve the next puzzle, and details revealing the truth of what happened there.”
Those might sound like lofty ambitions, especially to those who’ve played Soma; Frictional Games has already proven its writing chops, but Soma‘s gameplay is far more akin to the walking simulator genre than conventional puzzle-solving. But it seems like Ontos is offering a more robust interactive sandbox, encouraging deeper exploration and critical thinking. At another point in the press release, Frictional points out the rat-machine from the trailer, explaining that the player can either choose to believe that the machine really contains a human consciousness, or reject it as some kind of trick. Frictional says that these sorts of choices, revolving around context clues and social interactions, will be commonplace in Ontos, allowing the player to form Aditi’s story through some potentially inventive, loosely defined puzzle sections.