Inexplicably, there’s a metal hatch in the middle of a small, snow filled ravine. It seems like as good of a place as any to get out of the cold, only it happens to be one of the scariest places on Earth. Why is it that nobody ever realizes that horrible things happen in old abandoned ore mines? Well, as the story unfolds he finds letters and journals throughout the mine stating this place was a military base during the Second World War and while they were excavating certain parts of the mine, ‘things’ started happening. People went missing, crazy, or both. Creepy stuff groaned in the dark, things scurried in the shadows, and wolves with green glowing eyes attacked anything that moved…. you know, standard cave stuff. Nothing that would make someone want to turn around and forget that place.

The idea behind Penumbra is simple, mix the ‘find it’ aspect of an adventure game with the physics of a game such as Half Life 2. Interacting with the world in Penumbra is crucial to gameplay. There are almost no animations in the game; instead everything is controlled by the player. You open doors, turn valves, pull open drawers all by moving the mouse. Instead of clicking a valve to activate it, you have to manually move the mouse in a circular motion. This control scheme makes it possible to just crack doors open to peek inside, or experiment with the environment.

Almost everything in the unique levels can be moved, shoved, lifted or thrown. For example, you can use a hammer to smash a wooden crate, and then take the wood and use it to build a ramp to get over a highly charged electrical fence. The puzzles presented are unique and can be very challenging to solve. This unique style of gameplay also presents a unique style of problems. Stealth is the name of the game in Penumbra Overture and fighting is kept to a minimum, but when the crap does hit the fan your best bet is to run and hide. Trying to hit anything with the small hammer or pickaxe you have is damn near impossible.