Frictional Games, most renowned as developers of Penumbra and Amnesia games, has announced that their new horror tittle SOMA is nearly finished.
"Next week will be the last one before the games goes into Content Lock. After this, no new non-trivial content can be added to the game", told the studio on their Facebook page. [**editors note: check full text for more quotes below**]
This should mean that the launch of SOMA is in schedule, and Frictional Games is optimistic that the game will release in time for 22 September.
The full Facebook message below:
"SOMA draws near....
Next week will be the last one before the games goes into Content Lock. After this, no new non-trivial content can be added to the game. Instead, all efforts will solely focus on bug fixing, tweaking details and low-level optimization. Having this kind of lock is vital as things that might seem really simple additions could have ramifications that cause all sort of unforeseen consequences. In the final weeks leading up to release, you want to make sure that you only fix issues and not cause new ones.
Because of this, work has been extra gruelling the last few weeks as everyone wants to add their final stuff before we reach the point when this is impossible. Things are looking really good though, and we should basically have every single bit of content in the game by now. This means that next week will act more as a buffer zone in case something unexpected shows up, instead of a frantic race against time.
While the game is pretty much done content-wise, there's still a lot of other content to do. We need to prepare for the final stretch of PR. This entails making videos, art for the stores, sending out press releases, coordinating various sources, making review builds and so forth. There will plenty of work for us all the way to the end.
After such a long development time, five whole years, it feels insane to be this close to the finishing line. In just a month we will have unleashed our game, and all of you will be able to play it!"