Frictional Games, known for the Penumbra series and 2010′s fantastically creepy Amnesia: The Dark Descent, is teasing something new. A new website, NextFrictionalGame.com, hosts a blurry image above emblazoned with the Amnesia logo and the cryptic words “Something is emerging.” The image also contains a link pointing to a Google map of China. An Amnesia title with a Chinese backdrop? Could be.

The site is indeed registered for Frictional, and the domain information also points to TheDarkSwarm.com — a possible hint at the new game’s title — which leads to an unplayable browser game and a timer that continuously ticks upward every second. The source code on both sites mention first-person perspective, horror, action adventure and other qualities we’ve come to associate with Frictional. The Dark Swarm site was registered way back in 2007, and was updated in September of 2011, so it might be unconnected.

Frictional’s Thomas Grip told us last year that the studio was working on “an Amnesia-related project.” At the time, he said that the project wouldn’t focus solely on creating fear, but will hopefully “evoke other, less primitive, emotions as well.” If that means it will feature even a few moments without teeth-clenching, panic-stricken fear, we’re all for it.

Frictional teases a new Amnesia project, possibly set in China originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 18:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It looks like a sequel to the excellent indie first-person horror adventure game Amnesia: The Dark Descent is on its way. On a teaser website titled nextfrictionalgame (Frictional Games being the developer), the Amnesia title is shown against an extremely blurry background. The image is hyperlinked to a Google map of China, hinting that perhaps the next title will take place there. If you have no idea what Amnesia is, check out our Amnesia review…

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Nobody expected Demon’s Souls to be the hit it was, least of all Sony, the game’s publisher in Japan. When Atlus decided to publish the game in North America, it took a risk — one that paid off. The duty of publishing the sequel, Dark Souls, would then go to Namco Bandai.

Does Sony regret passing on publishing Demon’s Souls in North America? Senior VP Shuhei Yoshida thinks so. He told Game Informer the company passed on the game after seeing an earlier build of the game. “What happened with Demon’s Souls was until very late in the game’s development, we were not able to play the game through. There were framerate issues and the network was not up and running. We underestimated the quality of the game and to be honest, the media in Japan did the same.”

But still, even after a few hours with the final product, Yoshida remarked that he just wasn’t able to see the value in the game. “For my personal experience with Demon’s Souls, when it was close to final I spent close to two hours playing it and after two hours I was still standing at the beginning at the game. I said, ‘This is crap. This is an unbelievably bad game.’ So I put it aside.” In the end, Yoshida admitted Sony “dropped the ball from a publishing standpoint” and was not able to “see the value of the product.”

Why Sony passed on publishing Demon’s Souls in America originally appeared on Joystiq on Fri, 10 Feb 2012 21:45:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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