Tom Jubert is the lead writer on the Penumbra series of games. After Frictional released the tech demo of their remarkable 3D engine, it became clear that creating a fully-fleshed game was the smart move. To do this well, they’d need to plug a weakness: the narrative. So London-based Jubert was brought on board to work alongside the Swedish developers, and the result was Penumbra: Overture. This was originally intended to be the first of a trilogy, which was then shrunk to a two-parter after difficulties discussed below, with the narrative completed in Penumbra: Black Plague. Now, somewhat confusingly, there is to be a third part – Penumbra Requiem – although we’re told it’s not a sequel, but rather an expansion of Black Plague.
In our chat with Tom Jubert, he explains the collaborative process of taking an amateur tech demo into the professional market, the role of fear in games, which publishers we should be slapping, and some juicy tid-bits about the nature of Penumbra: Requiem’s unique design, further taking advantage of the engine’s stand-out implementation of physics.
