Layers of Fear (2016)

Let me just come out swinging. This game is terrible. The atmosphere is there, it just never coalesces into something meaningful. The graphics are meh, which is to be expected with Unity powering the entire thing. I was never truly on board with this, sort of hanging off the side for the ride until the baby scene. Without spoilers, let's just say that the ghost baby you chase turns out not to be scary in the least. It was so non-scary that I was on the floor, literally, howling with laughter for 15 minutes. Any mention of the ghost baby in Layers of Fear still reduces me to tears. Pretty sure that's not how your horror game is supposed to leave people.

Lots of fun if you plan in the dark with nice headphones! It didn't take me too long to get through it, but it was great listening to the creepy sounds and strange decent into madness! Usually my first reaction is to jump and run whenever something startled me, but then I'm also a completionist so I had to steady myself and keep searching drawers, and I loved it. Also really fun to play with a friend (especially when you know what's coming and get to watch their reactions!) and enjoy an evening wandering through madness. The game looks great, sounds great, and I didn't have any problems with crashing or studdering or anything. Would recommend!

I really enjoyed the game. Pretty impressed with the way how developers managed to acheive in terms of fear :) It appears that you don't have to kill anyone or run before someone to be scared. Very nice.. Will need to play with DLC. Graphics is really nice.

Story: 5/5 Worldbuilding: 4/5 Art Design: 5/5 Graphics: 4/5 Sound: 5/5 Gameplay: 3/5

I usually don't write a review after half an hour of gameplay, but as I wish I had had this information before spending money on this game, I'll make an exception this time. The graphics are nice, the atmosphere is created well and I quite like the idea of a somewhat creepy exploration game without fight scenes or having to run away. Still, this game is nearly unplayable for me because of its awful controls. To open anything, one has to click the mouse and move it. With a laptop, one only has the small touch pad and it doesn't always offer enough space for the movement required by this game. There is a chest I nearly couldn't open because I had to move the mouse upward and when I got to the end of the touch pad it wasn't upward enough and the trunk slammed shut again. Took me endless tries. Same with some of the doors. This might be the first game to give me carpal tunnel syndrome and it takes all of the fun out of the gameplay and makes it tedious. It doesn't save properly. When I leave the game, I'm back where I started. I tried several times. An internet search revealed conflicting information about how this game saves - some say it does so each time you hit Esc, which is NOT the case in my version, others say it only saves at certain intervals. In addition, it lagged badly until I set all graphics options to the lowest levels, but was just a minor issue that was solved quickly. So, while this looks like a game I might enjoy it if was user-friendly, I fear that I completely wasted my money on this one. It's a pity, I very much wanted to like it.