Frictional Games’ ARG Ends With Creepy Hotel Samsara Teaser — Is a New Psychological Thriller Incoming?
Frictional Games — the studio behind Amnesia and SOMA — quietly ran an ARG that ended with a short teaser for their next psychological thriller, seemingly set at a fictional luxury spot called Hotel Samsara. The tease arrived after a SOMA update and a week of community puzzle-solving.
What happened
At the end of September, a site advertising a luxury getaway called Hotel Samsara appeared online, and shortly before that Frictional patched their 2015 game SOMA. One line in the patch notes read, “Fixed faulty spam filters on Simon’s PC. Users may still receive suspicious correspondence due to treemail 0.1 filtering process issues.” You can see the patch notes on Steam.
After the update went live, players found a link to the hotel site hidden in the in-game emails on SOMA protagonist Simon’s laptop. That discovery was shared on Reddit here: this SOMA thread. The hotel site itself is hosted at HotelSamsara.com.
How the ARG unfolded
Players started by collecting bolded letters on the Hotel Samsara landing page and then worked through a series of puzzles over about a week. Along the way, the community shared clues and progress publicly, which pushed the ARG forward quickly. A running discussion of the early puzzle steps is available on Reddit: this thread.
The teaser video
The ARG culminated in a 42-second clip titled FRICTIONAL_NEXT_PROJECT.mp4, uploaded by Frictional and Kepler Interactive. The footage shows several areas that look like Hotel Samsara interiors, and it ends with the words SOMETHING NEW on screen, implying this may be a new, standalone project rather than a sequel to Amnesia or SOMA. Some players have also pointed out possible SOMA references in the short clip; that discussion can be found here: this Reddit post.
Frictional’s message to players
“Thank you so much for taking part in this ‘little’ journey we’ve all taken together,” the YouTube teaser’s description reads. “We really wanted to try and create something fun to show you a bit of what we’ve been working on. What we didn’t expect is just how much you would impress us with your ability to all come together as a community and work with each other to solve everything we threw at you. Admittedly, we did have to increase the difficulty when we realised the scale of the team we were up against, so give yourselves a pat on the back for that.”
“We can’t tell you how much fun we’ve had watching you all solve each step and create top-tier level memes and inside jokes,” the message continues. “It’s been a pleasure, waking up excited every morning to check the Discord and seeing which rabbit holes you ended up falling into. Hopefully, you enjoyed it as much as we did. You have reached the end of the path (for now). Thank you.”
What we know — and don’t — so far
Concrete facts are straightforward: the ARG led to a short teaser that appears to show Hotel Samsara, and Frictional thanked the community for solving the puzzles. Beyond that, the studio has not announced platforms, a release window, or a formal title. In short, we have a teaser and a location, but little else. Expect more details if Frictional decides to follow up publicly.
