On the same footing, most of the game environments you travel are engulfed in darkness and the game lacks a map or any other thing to denote travel except for signs scattered about. The lack of map equates to dozen of minutes wandering around disoriented because you have no idea where anything is. It’s frustrating to attempt solving puzzles as you meander about. This is especially true in Penumbra because you backtrack a lot. The whole game has a good physics engine and most actions are contextual. For example in order to pull a drawer open you have to click on it, hold the click, and drag the mouse towards you—as if you were pulling the drawer. The little physics touches are nice additions and keep things fresh.

Black Plague continues Overture’s cliff-hanger ending and Requiem finishes the story. Black Plague is more of the same good fun; however, Requiem is not. In Requiem all you do is solve puzzles without enemies, that is only environmental traps that seem to occur randomly and most of the times are one-hit kills. Requiem’s lack of enemies gives it a loose, unfinished aspect since the puzzles are boring, intricate, and riddled with traps that hinder the ability of enjoying the game by forcing one to constantly reload saved games due to unforgiving traps and lapses of judgment. 

The plot is forgivable and more or less enjoyable. The game heavily relies on reading as a viable medium in which to not only convey important in-game information (critical to solving puzzles and inherently progressing the adventure), but heavy psychologically driven scenes; the latter somewhat detracts from the game’s immersion. During the early hours of the game you are tasked with exploring some tunnels and as your character is about to head into the depths of them, he sees a spider scurry across—instead of that sole event being utilized as a catalyst to bolster up the experience by intrinsically epitomizing Phil’s arachnophobia, the main character simply says that he is afraid of spiders and points out how unfortunate he is to have to brave them and how he has to for the sake of survival.