A huge improvement over Overture, Black Plague provides a lot of answers to the open-ended nonsense Overture called its story. It somehow learns to take itself a bit less seriously while also being definitely scarier, with Clarence serving as some expert comic relief who still manages to pull the horror reins fantastically here and there. Also a significant improvement in puzzles, even there still were a few that made no sense and sucked. They understood how garbage the combat was in the first game, and their response to that was to remove it altogether, which came together to great success, with the Tuurngait Infected feeling absolutely horrifying to get chased down by, and from that making the couple actual “combat” sections feel pretty fantastic to engage with.

The whole old lost mine aesthetic unfortunately gets traded out for more run-of-the-mill abandoned laboratories, but it still works great in my opinion. Black Plague definitely feels like a true predecessor of what was to come in a couple years with the first Amnesia, with the focus on hiding from your enemies instead of engaging them in combat.

The story still poses some huge open-ended insinuations that feel way too huge to wrap your head around, but at least it was way less lackadaisical than Overture’s story progression.

The almost conclusive episode of Penumbra—until Requiem's controversial release—, Black Plague, fulfills the implications of Overture as an introductory chapter by developing the narrative threads to their Lovecraftian ends. Frictional Games realize a horrific environment of infections and insanity within an ancient, clandestine organization's secret research base to contemplate through the mind's manipulation a mirror of humankind's own selfishness as it relates to the alien findings within this base. One scene, specifically, speaks to this end with the game's only "combat" sequence—devastating, to say the least—and the introduction of Clarence, albeit annoying at times, intentionally so, evokes greater depth to the game's themes. The puzzles in Black Plague are as good as Overture, the horror and the monsters as well, but the narrative intrudes in aspects which, by providing more information, lose the implications and unknown aspects of Overture. On the whole, Black Plague remains a great game and a good, somewhat rushed conclusion. Unfortunate to some, Requiem remains as the true ending.

The two Penumbra games are more interesting curios than they are good games. What you'll find within Overture and Black Plague is a peek into the early days of one of the most important horror game developers of the last two decades, but beyond that it's not very compelling.

Don't get me wrong, on the whole I liked my time with the Penumbra games. They're still genuinely quite creepy and contain and are remarkably well constructed for indie games from 2007. That said though, they are completely eclipsed by Amnesia which came only two years after Black Plague. These really feel like glorified tech demos, proof of concept for the gameplay, story and tone of the Dark Descent, but given how brilliant the first Amnesia is, that's not as much an insult as it at first sounds.

Penumbra Overture in particular is quite creepy. Some of the puzzles are pretty great and the environments are surprisingly varied for a four hour horror game set in a weird mine. The story is surprisingly compelling too, with a brilliantly paced mystery unfolding as you make your way through this freezing hell, accompanied on the radio by a decently written madman who's been trapped a lot longer than you. It all builds to a suitably horrifying conclusion, followed by a cliffhanger that might have been better left unresolved. All that said, Overture still isn't a great game, far from it. The combat is absolutely awful, some sequences demand such immediate reaction time and foreknowledge that I have no idea how you'd complete them without savescumming and it is quite slight in the end.

For all its flaws though, Overture is definitely the better game of the two. If Overture is the first act in the story, then Black Plague feels like the third act from a different game entirely. Rather than a creepy, isolated mine filled with mysterious, mutated animals, we're thrust into repetitive research facility filled with goofy alien zombies. The exposition is turned up to eleven here, and one of the greatest strengths of the prior game - Phillip's ongoing and characterful interjections - are is basically absent here, as the protagonist's observations have been drained of colour. The conclusion just feels like a prototype of Amnesia's twist and while I didn't hate it, it's a sour note to finish the duology on. Thankfully combat is now absent, but the puzzles are definitely less interesting.

Overall, I do still think these games are worth a look. If you're a die hard Frictional fan, then you've probably already played them, but if not, they're always extremely cheap in a sale and you can play through both in an evening.

I'd say this second entry in the series is, overall, a fair bit better than Penumbra: Overture. There were a lot of irritating gameplay decisions in Overture (terrible combat, horrible UI when using tools, improperly contextualised 'hints') which are straight up removed in Black Plague. But it does at times feel like the devs didn't really make any attempt to replace these removals with anything. Long story short, Black Plague is much more of a walking sim than Overture or other games in the genre like Amnesia. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, I definitely prefer it this way than to how Overture felt the need to pepper the map with dozens of copy of the same two irritating enemies, but it does hurt the immersion a bit in Black Plague when it isn't very good at hiding just how infrequently you are in danger.

Aesthetically I'd also say Black Plague is an improvement on Requiem. The overall theme is more interesting (to me at least) and much much more varied; gone are the endless carbon copy mineshafts of Requiem, and the different parts of the facility in Black Plague actually feel like distinct and different places. I also found that the part of the Penumbra story told in Black Plague was somewhat more engaging than in Requiem. Requiem seemed to be focused on desperately coming up with reasons that the player character got himself into this mess to begin with (and frankly not coming up with many good reasons at all...), whereas Black Plague is about him trying to get out of it and is inherently more relatable. There are also more characters and generally more moving parts to the story, and one of the plot twists caught me completely off-guard in a good way. I was unsure about Clarence at first (the character you spend the most time interacting with), but I grew to appreciate his presence over time; he can be pretty annoying, but he gives this game a certain life and character that was less present in Requiem.

Black Plague, however, loses some points for me for its ending. It sucks. The last challenges / trials / whatever you want to call them are absolute nonsense, and completely tonally dissonant with the rest of the game. And this extends to the ending of (this part) of the story as well. Everything just becomes a bit farfetched and silly right at the close, and it definitely lost me a bit. But right up until the tonal shift (which is very near the end) I found this to be a pretty good time. It's another 'Amnesia with less stuff in it' game, but with almost all of the actively bad stuff from Overture stripped out, and as a consequence I feel I can recommend this one somewhat more.

Probably my 2nd favorite Frictional game. Penumbra: Black Plague is everything I could ask from a horror game. I love the atmosphere, the music, the premise, just everything. The only real complaints I have about the game is that some of the puzzles are really nonsensical and that the ending is a really slow nothing burger of a finale. Clarence will always be one of my favorite game companions (even thought he IS a bit annoying) and he was the only real break from all the hiding and chasing in this game. This is definitely a must play if you love the horror genre and with how cheap it is during steam sales there’s no harm in giving the Penumbra series a shot.

the solution to all puzzles within this game are to smash physics objects into other physics objects, bunnyhop through corridors full of non-threatening nudists, or read a couple pages from your book.
it's very cool.

Anyway I've been doing a marathon of all Frictional's library of games, because the Penumbra games as well as Amnesia are all extremely memorable games from my childhood. While Overture definitely had more intrigue and mystery going for it, this game fucking kills it for me in terms of atmosphere and aesthetics. Where it loses me by comparison is the personalities of important characters. Red in Overture plays a convincing lunatic to the end, while Clarence and to a lesser extent Dr. Amabel make Black Plague feel more like a budget sci-fi movie with quirky dialogue. While Clarence is conceptually fantastic and contributes to some of the best scenes in the game (turning the corridors into a nonsensical maze while communicating your location to enemies), he also constantly interrupts your moody adventure with his personality synthesized from the films our protagonist has seen over the years. He represents a despair inducing threat to your life almost as often as he represents an obnoxious meta-conversationalist and quip machine, this can feel disruptive of the aforementioned great atmosphere. Dr. Amabel is simply an unfortunate victim of her one-liners, in attempting to make a nerdy but sane sounding female character they sorta ended up with somebody who sets the tone of all her interactions with her own brand of eye rolling quips, practically every time you answer a video call from her. What's supposed to represent your protagonist's only hopeful encounter in the entire story feels more like paying your taxes. Speaking of the protagonist, I love his characterization as an obnoxious adventure game prick being devolved into more of a braindead weirdo as a result of the horrors he's experienced, and his progressing infection. Clarence deleting the periodic table from your head will always be a classic.

Oh yeah, I also don't really find any of these games spooky in particular, though as far as spooky games go, they were insanely high concept for their time. Nowadays they feel more like campy adventure games with a neat story and stealth mechanics you can just choose to ignore.

Part 2 of a 3 part series and much better than Overture. The QoL gameplay updates and overall atmosphere of Black Plague is much better than Overture. More tension, more fear, and better plot. Being yanked around by Clarence was more enthralling than being guided by Red. You can't fight back in this game like you could in Overture which introduces the classic patrolling and chasing monsters. Which means you lose progress for about 30 seconds which blows but it's easy to return to the adventuring.

Penumbra walked so Amensia could run. Amnesia is a completely separate story but the parallels between the two games are unavoidable. The sound design is the same as every Frictional Games title, simply perfect. The decision to ditch combat from last Penumbra paid off BIG TIME, the story is very interesting and its resolution is both perfect and quite existential. I will remember my playthrough of Penumbra for a long, long time. The setting of a research station from a near past hidden under Greenland's icy exterior feels great, scary, claustrophobic, and sometimes very melancholic or even nostalgic. The game also features quite diverse environments for how short it is. It pretty much eliminated all the problems I had with the previous game. As far as the bad goes, some of the puzzles are just incomprehensible for a normal, functioning human being. Really hoping this gets a remake of some kind in the future.

The gameplay in this is a solid improvement on Overture, however it was a completely underwhelming ending to all of the mysteries built up previously. The one thing this game had going for it (the great atmosphere) is completely destroyed by a ridiculously annoying, constantly talking invisible "companion" who serves absolutely no purpose in the story by the end. His dialogue tries to be witty, and I think he was intended to be comedic-relief but is never funny (which wouldn't really change much anyway) and is usually just constantly insulting and prodding you. It is impossible to enjoy the positive aspects of this game with Clarence talking non-stop. The puzzles are still mostly a slog, but enemy design is better than the first game in many ways. The graphics and controls are noticeable improvement as well, and it's starting to feel a lot closer to Amnesia, but all in all it was still just an absolute waste of great ideas in of itself. I'm really happy that Frictional took things in the right direction after this game and developed their formula with all positives and negatives of Penumbra in mind.

This sequel improves on the formula that would one day revolutionize the horror genre, for better or for worse.

The plot is interesting and it keeps you engaged throughout this very short horror game.

The ending is way too esoteric though, holy shit.