Layers of Fear (2016)

I've played a lot of games, and honestly I think this is the first that I truly am at a loss of words to describe this one. Then again I'm not sure it can even be described, only that it has to be experienced to understand how disturbing and frightening this game truly is. Is it a ghost story? Is it a mystery? Is it a nightmare? Is it a journey into madness? What makes the experience even more exceptional is that there is no blood and gore, and no monsters to confront. The one thing though that this game does... and perhaps why it is so frightening is that it almost seems to anticipate your moves as you work your way through this mind-screw. If you are looking for a game where your perceptions and perhaps sanity will be challenged, then this is definitely the game for you.

Layers of Fear is for those that enjoy psychological horror. The game is quite linear, built upon exploring the creepiest of mansions with excellent sound and music (they tell you to wear headphones, and they are correct in suggesting that). The game tells you nothing at the start, forcing you to explore and piece together what is going on. Some of the reviews speak of how it "got boring". I think that depends on the person. People looking for a quick climax or action will be disappointed. Again, if you like slow burn, creepy, psychological horror (with plenty of jump scares) then I recommend this game wholeheartedly.

I was searching for a good horror adventure and decided to try Layers of Fear, that was sitting in my library for a long time. I was misguided by the Genre "Adventure / FPP / Horror", as this is a Walking Simulator and unfortunately not a very good one. You can do so many things, open so many cupboards, doors and so on. But nothing is really interesting and worth exploring. Most of the clues try to describe a mad artists mind and life, but you basically figure out the most of this during the first few rooms reading a few notes and if you have at least some experience in horror stories you can easily extrapolate the following story. The mechanics make this even more a feeling of work instead of game, because opening drawers or chests can really get complicated if you do not find the correct angle. The presentation is nice and I really tried to like it, but it is just sooo boring to explore (and this is from a person, who really enjoyed Walking Simulators like Dear Esther or the Vanishing of Ethan Carter).

IT really is all about opening doors and nothing else. So if like to open doors, this is just the game, otherwise, I would say it sucks big time and lack gameplay and a point. Waste og time and money.

I should begin by making the blasphemous statement that 75% of the game's tension flies out the window if you turn down speakers or take off headphones. Some will say that doing such a thing in a horror game is the player cheating themselves. But I think it's fair to note that the game gets a lot of mileage out of sudden crashes and musical stings, and it gets stale. It's an old trick- you can startle me by yelling in my ear, and make me uncomfortable in the knowledge that you might do it again, but that doesn't really build into anything richer. At least one other reviewer mentioned the "Silent Hill" series, and my memory is that those games managed to create a sense of dread, of wrongness, without jumping up and yelling "boo!" To its credit, the game does manage to fashion some of that sense of dread and wrongness. It's just that that richer horror is undercut by the jump-scares. It's like the designers said, "You know, of course, that the only real monster is man. And we have put you in the shoes of just such a monster... But in case that doesn't grab you, here's some ghosts. Wooooo!" The game is not without its cleverness. Some of the visual design is nice; the sense of things changing because you are or aren't looking at them is its best trick. There are moments, like the multi-story telephone puzzle, that will remain in my memory for a time. But I was only about two-thirds through before I started thinking, "Could you please just show me where the next trigger to advance is hiding, please?" That sense of weariness, combined with the game's themes of despair, make it increasingly hard to care about self-preservation. "Okay, I'm going to move towards the scary thing if that will pick up the pace. Oh, did that "kill" me? Did I just "die"?... Should I care...?" A few bugs, some awkward interface manipulations and the like, and the protagonist's limping pace don't help. There are worse ways to spend six hours and a sale price, but I wasn't infatuated.