Hello,

On the Dutch adventure website, Adventure-island.nl, we have an (english) interview online with Frictional Games, the people behind the Penumbra games. Among other things, we talk about Penumbra: Overture, Penumbra: Black Plague and what they think about the adventure genre.

You can find the interview on the following link:
Click here

Thanks Sneaker, it was interesting to find out that they don't set out to make adventure games--they just seem to turn out that way

A great read! The designers discovered that in the first Penumbra game, gamers were using tools as weapons and picking fights with everything that moved? Which surprised them.

Unusual and intriguing that this led them to remove combat in Black Plague.

I thought that was funny too, but I actually missed the fighting element in Black Plague. It's not that I want to fight, it is that I want to defend myself when I'm backed up into a corner. Instead of running away to the nearest door like a brainless maniac, it would have been nice to actually attack it and then make a run for it. I finished Overture without killing a single enemy, but it was nice to know that there was an alternative when sneaking around and using the surroundings failed.