One of the things that impressed me most about 2015's horror game Soma is how it manages to be less scary than its predecessor, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, while still being more thematic. It's hard to present without spoilers, but it's a brilliant bait-and-switch that really shows how the developer, Friction Games, has evolved.

The studio seems to be aiming to offer something similar with its next title, the recently released "Amnesia: Rebirth," a video of players reacting to the horrors of "The Dark Descent" that made the rounds on YouTube, but Creative director Thomas Grip told Gamespot that the new game "feels different from what we wanted to do."

"There were a lot of things we thought people liked in 'The Dark Descent,' a lot of things we felt we could do better, a lot of things we learned from 'Soma,' and we felt like we wanted to bring all of that together," Grip said.

Indeed, the reaction to "The Dark Descent" is part of the reason Friction is taking a different approach to "Rebirth"; "Amnesia" was supposed to be about the nature of "human evil," but the screaming in the reaction video made the deeper themes obscured.

"So I wanted to give it another shot.

"It's not exactly the same subject matter, but horror is something that grows over time, not just a short-term thing where you see a monster and get scared.

That sounds very SOMA-like, and Grip says that "Amnesia: Rebirth" will have the same kind of storytelling; the strongest connection between "Rebirth" and "SOMA" is that it tries to put the player into a certain persona, a certain situation and spends a lot of time trying to convince the player.

"In terms of when the strongest impact comes, I think, as with Soma, it's in the middle of the game. That's where [Rebirth] really comes into its own and shows its true value."

Amnesia: Rebirth will be released later this year. In the meantime, Friction continues to play short teasers on its YouTube channel.