Penumbra: Overture - Episode One review

Maybe it was all the coffee we’d been drinking, but Penumbra: Overture (the first in this three-part series) is one of the few games that actually made us jump with fright. Entering the mysterious hatch and opening the mysterious door into all of that mysterious darkness, the protagonist nervously claims he thinks something might be down here in the darkness with him, and that if he happens to run into it, it would most likely kill him. So you crouch, and you hide in the dark from the thing because you’re no “Hollywood action hero,” and through some magical trick of character empathy, you’re actually scared. Then a wolf howls and you promptly shit yourself.