Frictional Games has released the first extended gameplay look at Ontos, its upcoming psychological sci-fi game and spiritual successor to Soma. The roughly 10-minute demonstration focuses on one of the game’s central experiments: a character named Crombie who claims to exist inside a computer server built from dozens of living rats. Creative director Thomas Grip says the sequence is intended to show how Ontos combines exploration, experimentation and philosophical decision-making rather than relying on a conventional moment-to-moment gameplay loop.
The demonstration begins with protagonist Aditi exploring the surrounding area before entering the main laboratory. Frictional says these spaces are designed to provide information about the people, experiments and ideas involved, with environmental clues helping players decide how they want to approach later situations. One smaller experiment involving a restrained rat appears before the main encounter, allowing players to test assumptions and make mistakes before dealing with the more complicated setup.
Another character, Zike, can be heard over an intercom during the sequence and is described as being obsessed with finding the soul. According to Grip, learning how characters think is not just optional background lore but can directly influence the choices available to the player. Understanding someone’s motivations may make it useful to avoid certain questions or even provide responses that conflict with the player’s own views in order to achieve a particular result.
The centerpiece of the footage is the so-called Rat Server, which Frictional says is made from 60 rats connected to a server rack. Crombie claims his consciousness exists within the system, creating the kind of deliberately uncomfortable philosophical problem the studio wants Ontos to explore. Grip says the scenario is meant to provoke questions about whether the rats themselves remain conscious and whether multiple conscious beings could exist within the same physical system.
Gameplay becomes more hands-on once Aditi begins interacting with the experiment. Players must manipulate probes attached to the system while interpreting uncertain instructions and deciding how closely to follow them. Frictional says there are multiple possible approaches, and experimentation can produce different outcomes depending on what the player tries and what they have learned beforehand.
Those outcomes are not presented as simple right-or-wrong choices. Grip says the player may not even understand all available options during an initial playthrough, with repeated attempts gradually revealing more about how the experiments work. That structure is intended to give Ontos replayability, as greater knowledge can change how players interpret the same situation and which decisions they make.
The slower, investigative structure also helps distinguish Ontos from a traditional survival-horror game. Frictional describes the experience as being built around researching unfamiliar systems, testing theories and eventually making a small number of important choices rather than constantly moving between scripted action sequences. The studio has been developing the concept for more than a decade, and Grip says the longer gameplay format makes it easier to communicate what the game is actually trying to do.
Ontos takes place on Samsara, a repurposed hotel located on the Moon, where players will investigate increasingly strange experiments while trying to understand the larger mystery surrounding the location. Publisher Kepler Interactive describes the game as a sci-fi mystery centered on questions about reality, consciousness and identity. The latest footage provides the clearest example yet of how those themes will be translated into actual player interaction rather than remaining purely narrative ideas.
Ontos is scheduled for release in 2027. Frictional and Kepler have confirmed versions for PlayStation 5, Xbox, PC through Steam, Epic Games Store and GOG, with no specific launch date announced yet.
