Many times, I felt an almost unknown feeling when playing Penumbra: Overture for the first time. One moment comes directly to mind. I had just barely gotten 2 hours into the experience when I found myself crawling through a small and cramped tunnel. Rock surrounded me and no light came through anywhere. The only light was from the green glow of my weak glowstick. Around me, as I looked for a way out of the tunnel, I heard the quiet crawling of small, quick steps. I had no idea of its location or even origin.  I cautiously walked ahead, still trying to find a way out of this collapsing tunnel. Only then did I hear those steps again. I turned around, pulling the hammer I had in my inventory out. Jumping right at my face was a spider the size of a rat. I reacted simply by screaming and pushing myself away from the screen. Before I knew it, the message "Death is the final unknown" appeared in red letters on the screen. With my heart thumping, I figured out that the feeling I had was a mix of dread and fear.

Few games can truly capture this feeling. A few examples do come to mind, though. Alien: Isolation, System Shock 2, Silent Hill 2, and the entire Penumbra series., which started with Penumbra: Overture.

Released in 2007 by Swedish indie developer Frictional Games, Penumbra: Overture is the first episode in the episodic Penumbra series. It is also a rather unique game among horror games and modern games in general. A PC, Mac OS X, and Linux exclusive, Penumbra: Overture is a strange combination of first-person adventure game elements with some survival horror elements. Following the ever-twisting tale of college professor Philip, the game seems to be a combination of the exploration and interactivity of the Tex Murphy games with the dread-inducing horror of Silent Hill 2. While this mix may sound like a recipe for disaster in the modern gaming era, it actually isn't. Instead, we get a start to what is one of gaming's best survival horror franchises. While Frictional Games' later released Amnesia: The Dark Descent may have been more well known, especially among popular YouTube users. Penumbra: Overture and the later Penumbra games could arguably be described as the better of the two franchises, as it is full of terrifying and memorable moments wrapped inside a brilliant and almost unmatched atmosphere.

Penumbra: Overture, like the tech demo that spawned its creation, uses Frictional Games' in-house graphics engine. Named the HPL Engine, in honor of horror author HP Lovecraft, it's really impressive for an indie game engine from 2007. Everything in the game, from the textures to models, are well rendered. The models in particular are well designed to fit in with Penumbra: Overture's overall tone and atmosphere. The weather effects, which are seen a few times throughout the game, are almost surprisingly well designed and implemented. For those curious of the level of graphics options, the developers have included quite a few visual options including motion blur and bloom. Not all of them are on by default, so you'll have to go into the options menu yourself to turn on or turn off some of the options.

But the two things that are most impressive about the HPL Engine are the lighting system and physics engine. Penumbra: Overture's lighting system is just brilliant, with differing light levels, a natural night vision, and dynamic shadows. It's all really impressive, especially from the perspective of indie developers. I'd even go as far as to say it's more than a match for the bigger id Tech 4 engine, if not better. Then there's the implemented Newton Physics Engine, which was on display in the original tech demo. In a similar vein to the popular Source engine, the engine allows players to pick up and manipulate almost everything in the environment. Barrels, locker doors, lanterns. Most of the environment can be used like this. There's also a sort-of gesture system, in which you open doors, turn valves, and more using mouse movements that mimic the real life actions. Not only is it impressive, but it makes the player feel more rooted in Penumbra: Overture's world by taking this more realistic approach. This also goes towards the game's approach to combat, but it doesn't work as well here. The idea for combat is interesting, using a "click-and-drag" approach, and it does work well when using a pickaxe or hammer to break wood or stone. But it isn't very well implemented when it comes to fighting the monsters, as it lacks the punch or contact of other melee-focused games like Condemned: Criminal Origins. It ends up making you want to avoid combat. This is a double-edged sword, though. Overall, however, the physics engine is done really well.

The sound design is Penumbra: Overture is simply masterful all around. Every sound effect in the game, from the growl of dogs to the metallic slam of doors to the quick pace of spiders, serve to immerse the player into the dark and scary world. It succeeds without a doubt, and set Frictional Games' later success in this field. It also helps to amplify Penumbra: Overture's already terrifying atmosphere. Then we have the voice acting. There isn't much in the whole game. The two human voices you'll hear in the entirety of Penumbra: Overture are Philip (in the opening cutscene) and a man who calls himself Red. Thankfully, what little voice acting you'll hear is done really well. Finally, we have the soundtrack. Composed by Mikko Tarmia, who would later compose Frictional Games' future games as well as Wolfire Games' fighting game Overgrowth, Penumbra: Overture's soundtrack can't go unnoticed. It's simply a masterpiece, full of well-composed music that manages to be both beautiful and haunting.

Penumbra: Overture starts out in the vein of Silent Hill 2. Philip, a college professor living in England, receives a letter from his missing father a few days after his mother's funeral. The letter leads Philip to a safety deposit box that belonged to his father. It is revealed that his father, a man named Howard, was legally declared dead 30 years prior. So, in the eyes of the law, the box was his. Its contents include a letter from Howard and various documents. The letter asks Philip to burn the documents and forget about it, but he instead brings the documents to a fellow professor. The documents point to a location somewhere in Northern Greenland. Led by the human nature of curiosity, he goes against his father's wishes and leaves for Greenland, hoping to find his father and the reason behind his disappearance. While exploring the seemingly unexplored wastes of Greenland, Philip finds a small black hatch. He ventures inside to take shelter from a blowing storm, but becomes stuck inside and tasked to find a way out.

The story on display in Penumbra: Overture is one of the game's biggest strengths. It's genuinely well written and well told, and is pretty original. But where the story succeeds the most is in doing something most horror games fail to do: placing the player and main character in an environment that is as believable as it is hostile. Few games truly succeed in doing this, and Penumbra: Overture is one of those rare success stories. The mine players will explore in the game has a dark history and characters inside it, all slowly opening and revealing itself to Philip and the player.

It all helps to build Penumbra: Overture's atmosphere. Like their feat in crafting the mine as a believable and hostile place, Frictional Games have accomplished an even more difficult task in creating the atmosphere. To summarize the atmosphere in a very blunt way, Penumbra: Overture is terrifying. It really is on the same level as Alien: Isolation, if not even more terrifying. The reason it succeeds as well as it does in Penumbra: Overture is how it relies on giving a panic-inducing dread that makes players fear for turning the corner, opening the door, turning around, or even moving at times for fear of encountering a deadly creature with no easy way to kill or escape it. There is not a single jumpscare to be found in Penumbra: Overture. Just this overlying dread that gives you a genuine fear for Philip's life. Plus, this is all heightened by some truly great sequences such as running from a gigantic earthworm or crawling through a spider's tunnel.

As I previously mentioned, Penumbra: Overture's gameplay is very similar to that of first-person 3D adventure games, with games like Tex Murphy and Realms of the Haunting coming quickly to mind for comparison. The idea is that players will explore an area of the mine and search for items, solve puzzles, avoid (or attempt to fight) enemies, and generally progressing through the story. Thanks to the physics engine I mentioned earlier, doing these tasks are generally fun to do. A few unique mechanics were added into the game. Along with the physics system and the associated actions, there's also a hiding mechanic. It's pretty simple. Crouching and not moving will allow the player to hide from enemy vision, with a blue aura around the screen's border signaling both the player being hidden and Philip's natural night vision. If players look at an enemy while hiding, Philip will suffer a panic attack, with his heavy breathing catching the enemy's attention. It's a really unique mechanic that works well in game.

One area Penumbra: Overture could not f*** up in was in the game's many puzzles. With puzzles being a staple of first-person adventure games like Tex Murphy and Myst, puzzles can make or break a game like this. Thankfully, the members of Frictional Games have done a more than fantastic job with the puzzles in Penumbra: Overture. They're really well designed, with clever solutions that require both thinking and looking at notes found in the environment. Plus, in a big contrast to many survival horror games, the puzzles actually make logical sense. Gone are the days of melting wax dolls to make a handle in Silent Hill 2 or playing the piano to open a door in Resident Evil. Now, puzzles make logical, real world sense. It's really impressive and shouldn't go unnoticed.

That being said, there are aspects of Penumbra: Overture that could turn away potential players. Firstly is the click-and-drag combat system, which I mentioned earlier. Secondly is the lack of given direction. This is more subjective than anything else, but the game doesn't give you a set direction to go. Rather than that, players are placed in a hub section with smaller rooms for puzzles. The order in which to accomplish these isn't given, leaving it up to the player to solve it. It's not a personal complaint, but it can frustrate some. Speaking of frustration, the final possible issue with Penumbra: Overture is in a few pretty frustrating areas where it seems like combat is the only way out. This isn't actually true, but it can't seem like it at times if you don't look hard enough.

Of course, at the end of the day, all of that is really subjective and really dependent on how you play the game. For most people coming into this, I can't see it bothering them throughout Penumbra: Overture's 6 hour or more campaign. It's not that the game is too short, with little replay value. It's because the bad in there is just pretty small, and pretty much outweighed by the good of Penumbra: Overture. But in the end, you can't deny how excellent a job Frictional Games did with Penumbra: Overture. It's a surprising and almost real take on horror that you couldn't have seen coming from a start-up studio that had 4 members during its development. The clunky combat and possible frustration aside, Penumbra: Overture is very enjoyable at the very least. But it can easily be classified as one of gaming's greatest survival horror titles. When seen alongside Frictional Games' later franchise Amnesia, the two could be seen as Silent Hill and Resident Evil. Amnesia is the Resident Evil, with it being more widely known and popular, but not as scary. Penumbra: Overture and its sequels sit in a Silent Hill-like position by being less known, but delivering more scares and a deeper atmosphere than Amnesia could bring. It's not for the faint of heart, but for those who decide to go into the mine, you'll be getting more than you expect from an indie game. You go into that mine and you won't be coming out of there for a while.