O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.
The influence of Penumbra series is often understated. Overshadowed by the success of the next projects by Frictional Games. The original Penumbra tech demo from 2006 wasn’t the first horror themed title to be in first person. Neither it was the first to emphasize stealth and puzzle solving over action elements. It might’ve not even been the first to work like a first person adventure game with physically interactive objects, since Trespasser (based on Jurassic Park) exists. Yet, in many ways, this changed how first person perspective horror themed games would work from there on.
And I had very fond memories of the games, apart from respect. Returning to them was a bit scary. And the fears turned out to be justified.
All of the games in the series have several things in common. They’re all first person adventure stealth titles with horror theme and heavy emphasis on object manipulation. You open and close doors, drawers, push and carry boxes and other objects, crank the valves via mouse movement and that wasn’t something that was usually done before Penumbra tech demo. You have an inventory and you can die from enemies or different hazards, while the saving happens both automatically and via preset save points. All games also share an unfortunate fact that they were designed for 4:3 screens so while they do support widescreen and higher than 1080p resolutions (via config file edit), the 2D elements all look wrong. They also all have a pretty good, if simple, soundtrack, though my favorite track is still the tech demo music (remixed in the Overture end credits).
The plot of the series follows a man named Philip who follows a mysterious lead against the warnings and finds himself stranded in a weird place in the middle of nowhere in Greenland. Due to that, there’s a strong emphasis on the feeling of isolation among a seemingly normal locations previously used for some scientific or industrial needs but now abandoned. And finding that he’s not exactly alone there. Games were super smart about the budget, so they tried to avoid showing the characters that in one way or the other accompanied your journey, yet managed to build them into something genuinely interesting.
Revisiting Penumbra: Overture (Episode One, as it originally included in the title) was weird. On one hand, it might be the most experimental of Frictional Games’ titles so far. It heavily experimented with building puzzles purely on physical object manipulation (which sadly aged poorly), it included the ability to fight back in melee or via dynamite sticks. It had vastly different in look and feel locations, each with its own unique ideas to try. It let you make traps for enemies. And, possibly due to its “episode one” nature, it kept a lot of things open to interpretation and, as a result, led to an engaging and creepy journey. Oh and the save artifacts had interesting “visions of another life” that added a mysterious layer to the game world. Also, Red, your weird companion over the radio, was a genuinely interesting character.
But, there are several terrible escape sequences, some puzzles are just infuriating, because they rely on you manipulating unwieldy objects and the ability to fight back became a bit of a double-edged sword. Sure, it was hard to just run up and attack the enemies, yet tricking them and then hitting them a few times was extremely easy, which meant that after a certain point you’d just do that, instead of sneaking around. Yet, I’d say that it’s the most interesting Penumbra title to revisit in a mood, story and mechanical way.
Penumbra: Black Plague was quite different. The basics were the same, yet some of the elements were changed and this time Frictional decided to push the storytelling heavily. Which is the best and the worst thing about the game. In terms of cool storytelling tricks, Black Plague still has some good examples of moments that make the player doubt themselves. And it had even more characters and moments around said characters, even if that wasn’t always a good thing. It also became much smarter with how puzzles can be designed, felt more polished, more creative with the enemies and hazards and was more “fair”. Oh and also ditched the ability to defend yourself completely, while making enemies humanoid in nature, paving way for what the studio will be doing next.
And I’ve had this more fond memory of the game than that of the original. Yet, upon revisiting it, I liked it quite a lot less. Part of the reason lay with that the pace of the puzzles and the game in general was often off – some puzzles were really terrible and boring, even if they relied less on physics. Another part was the fact that the story got pretty stupid by the end. The dialogue was often edgy, the plot, when all of its cards got revealed, was primitive and all of the smart storytelling was for naught with a story like this. But, it still has some cool moments and isn’t a bad game to replay.
Penumbra: Requiem was weird. It’s an expansion to the second game and is designed to be somewhat of an epilogue. I guess? It’s more of a collection of unrelated puzzle levels with some characters talking and story kind of happening, except it doesn’t. And the game ends the same way it started (and the previous one ended). It has some interesting locations and some of its puzzles are not terribly tedious. But overall it’s just a pointless game. With the script making it grating at times. Oh and there’s a Donkey Kong platforming level parody in there for no apparent reason with music included. Just, no reason to play this whatsoever.
And there we have it. Penumbra series just… didn’t age all that well, unfortunately. It remains important and it was a huge discovery 13 years ago, but by now both the Frictional Games and the horror theme game development community in general simply moved on to create something better. Overture and Black Plague have some elements to them that could be learnt from and if you, like me, liked the games when they came out, you can certainly revisit them. But otherwise, yeah, just play something else.