Layers of Fear (2016)

The game itself is not bad but for me it is boring so I didn't want to finish it. You just walk along corridors then you're stuck so you go back and suddenly the corridors change. And that's it all the game...

And why? Because it pretty much feels like a geniune nightmare. The repetition, the oppresive atmosphere, the pointless turns of events... The thing you feel when you have a nightmare. The slow pace is a welcome addition, and jumpscares are just sprinkled here and there, the game doesn´t want to scare you the cheap way. It want you to plunge deeper and deeper into madness, and what at first scares you big time then it becomes your standard travel mate. You end up finding up horrible stuff pretty normal, and at the same time true horror emerges from below... or maybe it´s you who is sinking down. That´s the true selling point of Layers of Fear: a convincing brush with madness though terror.

All'inizio ho avuto dei dubbi riguardo l'acquisto di questo gioco, ma alla fine mi sono detto che tanto per quel paio di euro non muore nessuno. Lo stesso giorno sono rimasto attaccato tutto il giorno davanti lo schermo del computer a nerdare su questo gioco. E' un horror o thriller, chiamatelo come volete, che a differenza di classici come Five Nights at Freddy's non si basa su dei semplici jumpscare. Infatti lo scopo del gioco e' di suscitare emozioni come la costante ansia, insicurezza, paura e allo stesso tempo la curiosita che t'invoglia ad andare avanti e proseguire. Detto in maniera semplice: gioco fantastico, atmosfera fantastica, grafica quasi ottima, gameplay molto piacevole, un horror diverso dagli altri e allo stesso tempo uno dei migliori. Che dire... i produttori Polacchi di questo gioco si meritano veramente un bell'applauso! Non vedo l'ora che escano nuovi giochi da questa casa produttrice altrettanto meravigliosi e che mi coinvolgano tanto quanto questo.

I've played a couple of horror games and I have not really been "that" scared. Darkness Within series has a very good atmosphere for example, but does not really give you the horror feeling. It's more like a very good Thriller. But I just bought Layers of Fear and got very impressed. First I thought it was a Darkness Within clone ish, but I realized quite early that this was something more. I turned all my lights off, waited until it was dark outside, increased the volume on my speakers (very good speakers since it's important), started the game on my 55" TV and gave it a chance. Darn! I had to take some smaller pauses between the stages since it was totally horrifying. I got caught after 20 minutes when I started understanding stuff and then I could not stop playing. What an incredible masterpiece! Totally worth at least 4.5/5 instead of 4/5. I'm sold! You should really try it out. But it is extremely important to create a good atmosphere in your room and crappy speakers is a big no no. If you have a small screen, then you need to be close to it. I was very impressed with all the confusion the game creates. This is not just a house where you can go back and forth to research stuff and play detective (like Darkness Within which is awesome). This will totally mess up your brain and what you look at may not be there if you turn away from it.

Layers of Fear is a great game. One that is genuinely creepy and has a great story to explore. Most of it’s negative quirks are not huge and the positives outweigh it. The graphics are overall well done. The lighting and shadows are great and the art direction serves the creepy vibe well. The game is mainly an exploration and puzzle solving game. I still consider it a horror game but by no means a survival horror game. You don’t have to manage your health or ammo and don’t have to worry about dying. The game still managed to put me on edge the further you descend into the protagonist's madness. You are going to want to explore as much as you can as the story is told through items you find such as drawings and mementos which bring flashbacks and memories to you. The game ran really well although it needs a beefy CPU to be able to do that. On my old FX-9590 I was only getting about 40 FPS but with my Ryzen 2600X I was usually 100-144 FPS with the game on highest settings. The game did have a lot of technical issues though. Many times the game would crash at launch. This would happen on multiple versions of the game, different distros, different kernels and different GPU drivers. I was able to finish the game but every time I went to start the game I had to worry if it would launch. The game never crashed if it did load though. The game had a decent number of features and options. There is an FOV slider, two AA levels, a toggle for AF, Vsync, two settings for ambient occlusion and 5 other graphics options. There is support for frame rates above 60 so owners of high refresh monitors can put them to use. The game does use an auto save system instead of manual saves. It saves the game after each room you go through but my issue was that it doesn’t tell you that. I found that out on a forum post from the developer. Some sort of indication the game was saving would have been nice. ALT-Tab didn’t work for me. If you are looking for a horror themed puzzle game such as Conarium then you will probably enjoy this. Blooper Team has really put themselves on the map when it comes to quality exploration/puzzle games that nail their theme such as Layers of Fear with horror or >Observer_ with the Cyberpunk gere. I beat the main game in a little over 3 hours. My rating: 8.5/10 My system: AMD Ryzen 5 2600X | 16GB DDR4-3000 CL15 | MSI RX 580 8GB Gaming X | Mesa 18.1.1 | Samsung 850 Evo 250GB | Solus 3 | Kernel 4.17.2-78.current