Frictional Games, the developers of horror games such as Amnesia: The Dark Descent and Soma, are working on a new project.
We know this because they keep teasing us with videos, riddles, and now cryptic release releases. “Not much is known. This we can share” is a message I recently got from Evolve PR, followed by another message saying Frictional Games has something to reveal “soon.”
The third and final Morse message was “I am Tasi.”
“I am Tasi”
The teaser video shows someone waking up in a desert, walking to themselves. We can hear a woman talk about finding someone, and reminding herself she is “still Tasi.” By the end, we can a clearer image of the desert, and we see a cave with a bright light shining out of it.
But before this video gave us something that vaguely looks like an in-game cutscene, Frictional Games published a series of cryptic short videos, seemingly unrelated to one another.
Box 7 Reel 2, Partial Success
This teaser video is nothing more than a black screen with eerie noises in the background. The final sound could be a screech of some unknown creature, but it’s hard to tell.
Its description simply reads “Artefact 1/7/115, marked ‘Triple Crown’. Video unrecoverable, Audio track fragment reconstructed, denoised.”
Box 52, Tape 16
The next video is only 10 seconds of some rocks with a mysterious symbol etched on one of them.
According to the video’s description, it was taken in 1983 near the village of Shetpe in what is today Kazakhstan.
Box 12, Recent Acquisitions
This video that was recovered in 2018 shows a man opening what looks like an old ammo box in some ruins beneath Salzburg, Austria. Inside, there’s a letter where someone is describing an itch in their brain and black worms writhing around in their eyes. Here’s a full transcript:
“There is an itching behind my eyes. As if a beetle burrows there, in the folds of my brain, boring its way in, mandibles tearing at grey matter. As if a gnarled finger has been pushed into my skull, a broken fingernail working into my thoughts. I want to reach in with a needle to scratch it. Or perhaps a piece of wire. Through the tear-duct, threading through the lacrimal canal.
“Thread-like black worms swim in my eyes. When I think about them they are agitated and start to thrash around. They know I am scared. And it makes them worse.
“If I hold myself still. If I ease my mind, if I empty my head and try not to be afraid of… Then the itching fades to the tickling of a feather. I’ve tried filling myself with the notes of a song, or the colours of a beautiful picture, but it doesn’t work.
“Only emptiness gives me any– [next word is obscured by a drop of blood]. I wish I had my gun.”
The video’s description mentions the document was lost, but you can take a good look at it in a picture Frictional Games published on Twitter.
Box 17, Card 9
The last video shows a little more. “Box 17, Card 9” shows two people exploring an underground tunnel. The two stumble on a weird shrine before a blood-curdling growl from an unseen creature sends them running.
The people in the video speak French, so I have no idea what they’re saying. The description isn’t very helpful, either. All it says is “Recovered 12/2/2013 via source S118. Manila envelope marked “Ivry – Edouard et Thérèse” in blue ink.”
Next Frictional Game
Frictional Games first started teasing this new project on a new website, simply called “Next Frictional Game. All the site shows is a gif of a pulsating embryo, which isn’t a lot to go on. But if you dog into the site’s source code, you discover the following three paragraphs:
“The rise and fall of dunes, the waves of a waterless sea. A single star burns in the void; below it is nothing but dust. Two lizards dance in the heat, writhing across the sand. A tower pierces the sky; an impossible point of ascent.”
“To plunder the earth for gold, then realise your coin has no worth. To travel a well-trodden road, then find yourself pathless and lost. To gaze at a circle of glass, to discover a world lies within. Life is the simplest of games, a game it seems no-one can win.”
“The veil is split in two, The fear gives rise to rage, A hundred lives from now, all this will be memory, lost in the desert.”
Fun stuff.
But wait – there’s more! There’s another message in the site’s source code, but this one’s encrypted. Deciphering it reveals the following:
“Black broken stones of a substance unknown. The anomaly does not lie in the physical form. Beyond sight, the lines of the world twist away from equilibrium and are reshaped. It is a tear in the veil. What lies beyond? Is this what became of Cassandra? eightnineytdasheighteightRhvQ”
Who’s this Cassandra person? The last like of the message might give us the answer. It’s actually a hint for another YouTube video URL: 89yt-88RhvQ.
Box 11, Recent Acquisitions
In the last video, we see a woman walking in the snow with a compass. When she reaches a pile of black rocks (the “black broken stones of a substance unknown”?), her compass goes crazy, and the video glitches out.
According to the description, this video was taken in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec. A recovery team was unable to locate the site or the rocks.
And that’s all we have to go on so far. While it might seem like a lot of info, we still have no idea what Frictional Games’ next project is about. We do know it will have scary monsters and perhaps another dimension, possibly one with lots of sand.
Frictional Games’ next project, known just as )))_&%>>> for now, will be revealed soon. We’ll keep you updated.
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