I completely understand that sentiment. I hope you wind up enjoying it! I started the Bunker and it feels a bunch like Penumbra so far which I am extremely happy about. Hopefully it will keep it up as I move along.

I’ll admit that I am fairly biased on it; one of my focus areas in college was Arabic folklore and so the story hones in on that itch in a really interesting way for me. I wasn’t super invested in the personal story of Tasi but I think there’s enough “Lovecraft mixing with folklore” elements to make up for it. If you like stories like The Nameless City or at the Mountains of Madness and just the general sense of discovering strange and ancient things then it would probably be worth picking up on sale. I think the biggest thing is that it felt more like a visual novel than a game in a lot of places, so also keep that in mind.

I think the biggest thing with Rebirth was that if you weren’t super into the story then there was not a lot to fall back on. In Dark Descent the puzzles and horror sequences were amazing which gave some leeway for people who weren’t interested in what was going on with Daniel. Personally I really enjoyed Rebirth but it wasn’t for the gameplay - I really loved the set pieces in the caves/desert but it was much more of a walking simulator than Dark Descent or Soma.