Layers of Fear is my kind of horror game. There are no monsters trying to kill you or
inventory to manage, just your psychotic character wandering around his house
hallucinating crazy stuff. It’s
basically a creepy “walking simulator”, but that’s fine by me. I’ve grown tired of survival horror (the
“survival” part wears me out!) over the years, so a game like Layers of Fear
that just focuses on the horror aspect is a welcome change. For the game to be so well put together
overall as Layers of Fear is, well, that’s just icing on the cake. See our full Layers of Fear review for
more. Game Details
- Publisher: Aspyr Media
- Developer: Bloober Team
- ESRB Rating: “M” for Mature
- Genre: Horror
- Pros: Some decent puzzles; genuinely creepy; fascinating story; great sound
- Cons: Lead up to the end is awful; game doesn’t focus you on the scary well enough
- MSRP: $20
Layers of Fear has you playing as a struggling artist whose
past actions have driven him mad with regret.
He just wanders around his house and hallucinates while trying to
complete his ultimate masterpiece. What
does he regret, exactly? The past is
revealed as you play through the game and saying too much, or anything really,
will spoil a lot of what makes Layers of Fear so interesting. Let’s just say he was a bad, bad man, a
terrible husband, and an awful father whose art was more important to him than
his family.
The gameplay in Layers of Fear is essentially just a
first-person walking simulator. There
aren’t enemies to kill or even any weapons to pick up. You’re just sort of along for the ride as
the main character explores his house and remembers what a piece of crap he has
been and is. He is hallucinating pretty
much nonstop, though, so as you explore the house shifts and changes and twists
in increasingly dark and sinister ways right before your eyes. The horror elements come in the form of
creepy imagery and sounds as well as fairly frequent jump scares. The jump scares are a little predictable,
but the game will still manage to surprise you now and then.
Each room you explore is a puzzle that you have to figure
out how to solve in order to make progress.
Since you’re hallucinating, though, nothing is ever as it seems. Rooms morph and change in front of your
eyes. Hallways repeat over and over
until you find the right exit. In a
strange and sort of annoying gameplay feature, you can open any drawers and
cabinets in the game, though 99% of them have nothing of use inside except that
some rooms require you to find a key or other item before the door opens. Other rooms require you to solve puzzles by
discovering a combination to a lock or finding a phone number. There is a lot of variety to the way the
rooms shift as well as the puzzles the game offers, which keeps you on your
toes.
I do have a couple of complaints, though. First, the controls for opening drawers and
doors and picking up objects are extremely finicky. You have to be in exactly the right spot for the icon to pop up,
which is annoying. I also have to say
that, despite being a horror game, Layers of Fear does a surprisingly poor job
of making sure you’re actually looking at where the scary stuff is
happening. You have full movement and
camera control at all times and I often found myself looking through drawers or
somewhere else while the scary stuff – noted by a creepy audio cue – was
happening behind me or somewhere else off camera. I feel like I must have missed a good 50% of the scary moments
overall.
My third issue with Layers of Fear is that the game gets
progressively worse the longer it goes on.
It seems like the best puzzles are all in the first half of the game and
the way the environment shifts and changes gets less interesting and more
predictable the longer you play. It is
like the developer ran out of ideas, which makes the last third or so of the
game a real grind. The final big
puzzle, which has you picking up pieces from a game of checkers scattered all
over, is particularly awful. Layers of
Fear is so good to start with and then just drags at the end.
The presentation is very nice in Layers of Fear. The graphics are outstanding and the house
is full of incredible detail. The
sound, particularly the sound effects, is also extremely well done. Sound is always an important part of a
horror experience, and Layers of Fear absolutely nails it.
My one complaint with the visuals is that the game has a
weird accelerated look option – you start off turning very slowly but it
accelerates and gets faster as you hold the stick – that is absolutely
obnoxious and basically instant motion sickness for folks that are susceptible
to it. Thankfully, you can turn it
off. Strangely, though, at the very end
it is like the game doesn’t care that you turned the option off and brings it
back in full force, perhaps as a way to amp up the psychological horror it’s
throwing at your character. It just
made me sick and made the ending a real chore, though.
Layers of Fear is a horror game with so much potential
at the beginning, but it really sort of sputters by the time you reach the
end. It is still very scary and
enjoyable and fun, but it could have been so much more. It only takes 4 hours or so to beat it once
(there are multiple endings that change based on what you do in the game), so
even if it does falter a bit in the second half it is still well worth
playing. If you’re in the mood for a
pure horror experience, Layers of Fear is a solid choice that we can easily
recommend.
