Ontos Creative Director Compares its Larger Experiments to Shadow of the Colossus

As Frictional Games gets ready to release its next game—Ontos—later this year, creative director Thomas Grip has once more affirmed that it won’t be a “stressful or scary” experience like the studio’s previous works. In an interview with GamesRadar, Grip spoke about how the experience will be “simply different” from standard survival horror games.

“In your more standard horror game, say the first Amnesia, the focus is to have players survive in a scary environment,” said Grip. “The intent is to evoke a very primal sense of fear. In Ontos, the focus is more cerebral. It is about encountering strange, often very disturbing, situations where the player is tasked with figuring out the best approach. So, where your typical Amnesia-like game has you encountering a stalking monster, Ontos puts you face to face with a man trapped inside a computer made out of rats.”

He went on to note that the design intention behind Ontos isn’t to make it “a stressful or scary game in the traditional sense.” Ontos isn’t going to simply be about survival. Rather, Grip described it as a more “hands-on experience” that will focus more on providing players with “heavy and thought provoking themes. The goal is to evoke this deep existential terror that stays long after you finish playing.”

When it comes to puzzles—a staple of many survival horror games—Grip explained that the bigger ones will largely revolve around “interactive story scenes”, with smaller-scale standard puzzles being spread out over the course of the game. Solutions to these puzzles will also be entirely up to the player to figure out, and there will be “a wide range of options on how to complete” them. It is also possible to “screw it all up” when it comes to puzzle solving, and Ontos will feature narrative consequences for these failures.

Grip has described these bigger puzzles, dubbed Experiments, as being the game’s highlights, and he went on to compare them to a typical boss fight from PS2-era classic Shadow of the Colossus. These larger sequences will often involve players simply partaking in “extended preparation for the Experiments,” which will also have them test out their tools and play around with the various interactions available.

“In a way, one can liken it to something like Shadow of the Colossus, where the boss fights are the core of the experience,” he explained. “Many sequences and areas of the game are basically just extended preparations for the Experiments. Testing tools, discovering ways of interacting, saving up resources, understanding the stakes and overall just collecting enough information to be able to overcome these complex and layered scenarios. […] Much of the game is built around the looming excitement and dread of what the next big Experiment will be like.”

Ontos was unveiled just last month with a trailer showing off some of its creepy visuals. The title is slated for release later this year on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series X/S, and will feature Stellan Skarsgård of Andor fame in a starring role.