2010s horror savior Frictional Games has just revealed its next game at The Game Awards 2025, and I'm already preparing my vomit bucket. That's how you know it's a Frictional Games title.
The Swedish indie studio helped popularize the weak survival horror protagonist that genre forefathers like Silent Hill invented, using 2010's Amnesia: The Dark Descent to prove it would suck a lot more if you were stuck in a Resident Evil monster mansion, but didn't know how to use a gun.
The 2015 sci-fi survival horror game Soma advanced this theory – protagonist Simon Jarrett is not only trapped with monsters, but also with liars in an unstable reality – and it's still one of the most impressive horror games of all time. So I'm glad to now see Ontos, a spiritual successor, following in Soma's dragging footsteps.
The Game Awards trailer for Ontos shows a decrepit hunk of metal (not unlike the underwater research facility Soma is set on) where a strange man ponders the meaning of existence, and an ecstatic woman peels off her own skin. To each their own.
"You'll play as Aditi," writes Frictional Games creative director Thomas Grip, "who has received a message from her estranged father promising to reveal the mysteries of their shared past, including the truth about an inexplicable miracle from her childhood.
"Aditi's quest for answers will lead her to the repurposed moon hotel Samsara, a shadow of its former glory."
Ontos' trailer shows a tortured society in decline, where people might do anything to their flesh for the sake of experimentation.
"When we first released Soma back in 2015, there were some lingering ideas of how we could push things further, both in terms of gameplay and also narratively," Grip says. Though, he emphasizes that Ontos is not strictly a horror game.
"Our game is complex and layered," says Grip, "and we want the tension to be more personal and cerebral rather than imminent danger from monsters – making players think 'am I making the right decisions here? And if I'm not, what will the consequences be?'"
Ontos is out in 2026; here are the 25 best horror games to play right now.
