ONTOS: Frictional Games Presents SOMA's Spiritual Successor at Gamescom 2026 with Stellan Skarsgård in the Cast

During Gamescom's Opening Night Live, Frictional Games and Kepler Interactive showed new gameplay footage of ONTOS, a sci-fi thriller coming in 2027 to PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S, accompanied by a brand new trailer.

In the game, players take on the role of Aditi, who explores Samsara, a converted lunar hotel where unsettling and ambiguous experiments are hidden. Each environment is unique and challenges the player's morality, encouraging careful exploration to discover possible outcomes.

In today's trailer, Aditi encounters an experiment conducted by Crombie, a scientist who arrived at Samsara seeking answers about the nature of his own individuality. In an attempt to create an artificial mind, Crombie transferred his psyche into a server powered by a mass of interconnected rats: while the machine's voice urges Aditi to reconnect it to its body, the latter reacts with unsettling pleas for her to stop.

The core of the experience is moral freedom: follow the machine's instructions, attempt an alternative approach, or sabotage the experiment entirely out of pure curiosity. In ONTOS, there are no right or wrong choices — only the player's morality will determine Aditi's path.

For those present at Gamescom, a faithful reconstruction of the rat server experiment allows interaction with the game's scientists and the chance to test oneself in a series of scenarios and thought experiments. Provided, of course, that rats don't gross you out, we might add.

The cast includes Golden Globe winner and Oscar nominee Stellan Skarsgård. Developed by Frictional Games (the Swedish team behind the acclaimed SOMA, of which ONTOS is considered the spiritual successor), the game is already available for wishlisting ahead of its 2027 release.