Penumbra: Overture is a decent adventure horror game. I like the adventure aspect of it the most and there were some satisfying puzzles although maybe a bit too easy.

Apparently the combat in this game sucks but... I tried fighting the dogs once and they didn't die after hitting them a ton with my pickaxe and explosive barrels so I just concluded they were invincible and combat wasn't an option. I also concluded that the spiders were too small to be hit after trying lol. So I didn't engage with the combat system at all, thinking it was non-existant. I just snuck around everything and had a decently fun time doing so.

The story was pretty interesting as well. It left me interested to see where it leads in the next game.

Great atmosphere, captivating story, interesting and thoughtful puzzles - Peak puzzle horror right here.
My only issue is that the game introduces some counterintuitive solutions later on.

Looking forward to playing Black Plague and Requiem.

solid short game

you playing minecraft in a cave looking for diamonds. That's funny, i'm in the same cave looking for minors

I was hooked. Love the feel of the older games that don't hold you hand. Has it's problems but over all an absolute beloved classic. Time to start the sequel.

Pelottava Mato Peli!!

Penumbra Overture is Frictional's first commercial release that came out back in 2007 and it laid the foundation for their massive hit: Amnesia TDD. While the game isn't the most polished nor is it the most scary game; for what it has going for it certainly does achieve what it can for a small indie team back in 2007.


Penumbra: Overture is the first in the so called "Trilogy". Penumbra: Overture starts of with Phillip, an English physicist who found a letter from his dead father Howard, asking to remove and destroy all documents related to the Archaic (which we will find out in Black Plague). Phillip being the curious bugger he is, ventures off into Northern Greenland where he stumbles upon a sealed bunker that leads to the mines. During his expedition, he later finds a radio where he is able to get in contact with the lovable character Tom Redwood or simply called Red (who is also a lunatic but a lovable one at that, and he is very Scandinavian). After escaping mutated dogs, giant worms and spiders while figuring out what went wrong within the mines. At the end of the game, you find Red trapped within a sort of incinerator. In which you have to kill Red to save him from his torment. Red was infected with the Tuurngait virus (which we later find out in Black Plague) and Red couldn't kill himself due to the virus preventing him from doing it. While it is sad that Red gets killed in the end, you also have to remember that Red was suffering for a long time within the mines (miss him alr).

Penumbra Overture is very different compared to Amnesia. Sitting in the dark now benefits you instead of hurting you. I honestly thought that Phillip also had nyctophobia but I later figured out that the dark helps you in evading the enemies. The Puzzles within Overture are quite unique and utilize a lot more of the physics while adding some basic puzzles. The combat is certainly unique and kinda cool on paper. But for the most part, the combat is really clunky and very unreliable. The enemies (besides the worm) aren't that scary, which is sad considering this game has such a good first impression with the main menu setting the atmosphere from the get go. It later loses that momentum and it really drags at the end.

Overall if you are a big fan of HP Lovecraft or a big Frictional Games fan boy (hehe) or both! Then you should totally give it a shot. It has a lot of issues and the visuals aren't up to par with today's standards. But the game has a unique narrative and it is a lot of fun and quite short!

6/10

A classic horror game that doesn't overstay its welcome.

I mainly played this to complete my journey through the Amnesia games. I did like that it was short enough that I could get through it in one sitting, because its quite a dated game by now.

It definitely has great atmosphere despite the simple graphics, but doesn't do anything revolutionary by today's standards.

I found the puzzles to be fairly simple most of the time, but sometimes you figured out that you were missing an item but didn't know how far to backtrack to find it.

As others have mentioned, the combat is terrible, requiring you to move the mouse with the button held down but once you are in this mode you can't adjust your aim so you have to guess where the enemy is going to be, which is not so easy for the small spiders.

I would recommend this if you can get it cheap and have a quiet night to yourself to play this in the dark.

perfecto gamo da

After playing The Bunker and going back to the roots of Frictional Games, its very interesting to see some of the same bones being used in their gameography but never the entire skeleton. I would say that for a puzzle horror game, this works, the puzzles and the ambience go well with the mystery of the story at hand.

However, Penumbra the first chapter faces a massive flaw that everyone can agree on, the combat. This is biggest downfall, just for it in general, the game should suffer a thumbs down, but thankfully everything else holds it together enough to keep it from that. It would be interesting if they can go back to this title and rework it to a modern version of Bunker, they have all the elements already, puzzles, back tracking, maps, notes, creatures to get past and the so called sneaking.

Penumbra Overture is a nice little game that can be beat in one siting and is set up to the follow up Black Plague.