Q. Where does the name “Frictional Games” come from?
A. As always it’s hard to find a name everyone can agree on. So eventually some childs play led to the name Frictional, which is friction and fictional toyed with a bit. We wanted to reflect on the concentration of physics and story in our games, so at the time it sounded like a good name!

Q. What were your inspirations and influences for the Penumbra games?
A. Many varieties of games - horror games in general, as that is a genre we wanted to explore - as we had ideas we felt could contribute with increasing the feel of horror in the games. Mainly minimal use of weapons, hands on physics and believable puzzles and solutions. Lot of inspiration from text-adventure games, on ways to make the story central to the game and build a lot of the gameplay around it. Movies like “The Others” were huge inspirations for creating most of the horror with simple methods, such as lighting, sounds and music and not showing or revealing anything with expensive visuals. In particular “The Blair Witch Project” was an inspiration on making a competitive product with a small budget. Our minimal budget led to ideas like using the physics for all doors, drawers and such as we tried to find a method to avoid having to spend time and money on making lots of animations.

Q. What were your goals for the individual games?
A. For Overture, it was as simple as getting the game done! We had saved money, did some extra work and lived on the bare minimum possible for 8-9 months to be able to do the game and get it released. As much as possible to ensure that the game gave the experience a good start and to really end in a way that would make players crave the next episode.

For Black Plague we wanted to polish and make the best game possible. We had problems with the first publisher, but had found a new Publisher in Paradox Interactive, we had also decided by then to make it a two part game instead of a three part. With that knowledge we really tried to make our best effort on ending the series as well as possible, with improving everything from the first and as smooth as possible make two games into one game.

Requiem, with the expansion it was basically an idea to explore the use of physics in the series as much as possible. For all Penumbra games most puzzles have always come with multiple solutions if there was logical reason to do so, with Requiem we really did our best effort to add as many solutions as possible and spent a great deal of time making sure we didn’t forget any! All previous Penumbra games always had users coming up with additional solutions we had overlooked, unfortunately the same happened in Requiem. But as with the previous games we released a patch with fixes and included additional solutions at the same time.

Q. Which part of the games are you particularly pleased with?
A. Black Plague, we had a more stable living situation and the experience from the first game. It led to that we could concentrate and really make our best effort to do a game representing our ideas, designs and at the same time incorporate feedback we received from players and press on the first game.

Q. Why has the gameplay style made such a drastic change in the third game, Requiem?
A. We finished the series with Black Plague. We then got an opportunity to do an expansion for Black Plague, and as an expansion we had less time and money to do the game and had to examine what options we had. We decided to do a puzzle game as that would result in as much new content as possible and a more interesting challenge for us to create. We had some ideas we wanted to explore, to really try and push how far you could take the physics in game, so in Requiem all objects are driven by physics, not even important items are static inventory images. By making each level a single controlled environment we could faster develop and test puzzles, with more freedom in how the physics puzzles could be designed without ending up in an “un-winnable state”.

For us, Requiem is the most advanced Penumbra game, it has multiple solutions to all puzzles and really leaves the game world and its physics open and unrestricted without any risk of the player getting stuck. We are very pleased with this as for us the overall game has met our expectations, but we have also learned our lessons! First even when making expansions one should not strive to far away from the original idea of the game, it’s important to continue creating a game that meets the expectations of the end-user. It is also of similar importance to really make sure you communicate what game you are creating, we thought we were really clear from the beginning that it was a puzzle oriented expansion, with a different gameplay and a setting to match the 10 USD price. But clearly a lot more effort should have been made in this area, in particular when you have had a game series as troubled as Penumbra with being first a three-episode game and then a two-episode game and finally a two-episode game with an expansion…

Q. Is it possible we could see another episode of Penumbra in the future?
A. At the moment, no. We are really excited about our next project and we have a real urge to begin at something new, starting from the very beginning and rebuilding to get a good start from the first day. For the future, there is no reason to say there will not be another Penumbra game. If we manage to stay in business, grow ever so slightly and get all the experience possible from the coming projects, the idea of a new Penumbra game can be really exciting. Imagine a Penumbra game that really does manage to live up to all the ideas and wishes we have!

Q. What about other games? Are Frictional currently working on any other games?
A. We are working on a new survival horror game, set in the 18th century. Currently, it is unnamed and we have just started actual development. We have worked on the game design and technology for over a year, with as much man power as we have been able to spare. Since September 2008 we have been working full-time, at the moment we have come so far that the technology is mature, the design and planning are ready, we have the graphical style and the inspiration in place, so very exciting at the moment as we can create, test and play very early versions of it.

There is no connection to the Penumbra games, but we are staying within the horror genre, further trying to explore and polish many of the ideas we have. This time we are definitely concentrating on making a survival horror game, something that is easier defined and not open for debate if it is an adventure game or a first person game. We are designing it to be a game with weapons, but not about weapons, there will always be options and a preference to avoid combat but the combat features of the game will be more prominent than what it was in Penumbra. For anyone worried, we do still believe in less combat makes for a better horror experience.

Q. Are Frictional Games likely to develop for home consoles in the future? The Penumbra series looks like it would suit the Wii’s control scheme well.
A. We are looking at the consoles as a viable option. It would be great to get a game out on a console, to explore that world as much as we have explored PC gaming. We have signed up to be able to do Xbox 360 development, but have not initiated anything. The Xbox is the most likely platform for us as we believe it would be similar to PC development and most of the technical issues manageable for a small company like ours.

There are many uncertainties, but at the moment I know Thomas (founder and programmer) is really strained by the problems resulting from having a platform (PC) with endless configuration options. We spend a great deal of time testing and solving problems for users that are due to all these configurations; with one Xbox configuration for millions of users, a lot of time could be saved. Possibly all the saved time would be spent on many other new tasks required to do a console game, but even then they would be new and more exciting tasks for us.

We have discussed and examined the possibilities of a Penumbra Wii version quite thoroughly, but from our conclusions of the functionality of the controls the experience would not be that great or even different from the PC version. The motion controls are not delicate enough to use for the interaction, so it would have to be the pointer functionality of the Wiimote that utilised to do all the interaction and that would be the “same” as using a mouse. With that in mind and the work required to get the game onto the platform makes it a bit of an alien idea for us, but we are always interested in keeping the door open for the possibility!