“You Should Play This” focuses on modern horror games worth your time and attention.
The first-person perspective is a keen favorite for the makers of modern horror video games. After all, not knowing what might be there when you turn around is an essential tactic for instilling fear and dread, and it means you can load stuff behind the player’s back too!
Few games embrace that latter part quite as well as Layers of Fear. Pretty much every time you look again at something behind you, it’s changed in some way, and while not a bloody or aggressively terrifying horror game, it’s very good at ratcheting up the disorientation and unease.
The resurgence of horror as a video game genre has been predominantly down to indie developers simplifying the process and taking horror back to the basics whilst using the strength of their interactivity to play on players fears in far more cerebral ways rather than chucking body parts at them, and this game is definitely a part of that.
Layers of Fear comes from Bloober Team, a Polish game developer whose last outing into horror was creating the horrific BRAWL (horrific because it was a terrible game rather than anything upsetting psychologically. Well…a bit). Noting was really expected of Layers of Fear as a result, even if the pitch did sound rather interesting.
The plot to this psychological horror game sees you in the paint-specked shoes of a troubled artist who is trying to complete his magnum opus painting. In fact, your first task upon entering his creaking, sprawling homestead, is to seek out the unfinished art and continue it. A few brushstrokes in and our tortured artist begins to have some trippy hallucinations that seem to stem from the secrets behind this masterwork.
It’s from here that Layers of Fear sets its stall out as a veritable headfuck machine, as it plays with perspective and that aforementioned fear/dread of what might be over your shoulder. All while unraveling an intriguing, and increasingly disturbing, mystery as to the source of the painter’s woes.
There’s a very basic fetch quest dynamic to each of the game’s six chapters. Each has an item at the end that ties into the completion of the painting, and along the way, more of the story behind that painting is uncovered. Of course, the journey is often more interesting than the destination, and Layers of Fear really makes its journeys memorable bites of psychological horror.
Despite starting life before P.T. was even a surprise teaser, Layers of Fear shows that P.T. is, in fact, the most relevant horror game of the modern era to discuss when considering horror’s current evolution in video games. Its clever manipulation of perspective and disorientating world shifts is the backbone of a new breed of psychological horror-led games that play tricks with the player.
It’s pretty clear early on that the artist’s own psychological problems have an effect on what he sees in his home. Each time you turn your head in Layers of Fear, you invite it to manipulate the painter’s mansion while you’re not looking. Rooms change entirely, corridors loop endlessly, words are scrawled on walls, objects move unseen and paintings shift and change before your eyes.
You never quite trust that the next time you turn around, something hasn’t changed, even if it is in the subtlest sense. The changes to rooms are often impressively clever in design and are done in such a way that you never feel sure that you’re the one controlling things. One thing is for certain though, Layers of Fear is never done messing with you.
Your interaction with the house may be as simple as opening doors, drawers and examining items, but like the best ‘walking simulators’, the real interactivity is discovering what’s around you and why. Jump scares are thankfully kept to a minimum (and are the weakest parts of the game). There’s some wild imagery thrown about during your time in the artist’s house, but it’s honestly remarkable how restrained the horror is most of the time.
The build-up to the more unsettling and trippy moments in Layers of Fear comes in slow-drip form. The small tweaks to the visuals escalate into some striking scenes (the child’s bedroom set-piece manages to be mesmerizing and creepy in equal measure) of psychosis-induced delirium, and as you uncover the story behind the artist’s obsession it only gets more intense.
To say much more spoils the experience immensely. Going in as cold as possible hugely benefits Layers of Fear and its approach. I will say the Inheritance DLC, that takes a time jump forward to tell the story of the artist’s daughter and her return to this seemingly cursed home, adds a much-needed second perspective on events, even though it lacks the same impact as the main game. It’s still short and important enough to be worth supplementing the main story with.
Layers of Fear is the kind of horror I wanted more of in this current era of video games. The sort that goes out of its way to disorientate, manipulate and unnerve you at every turn without screaming it in your face with gore and gaudiness.
You can find Layers of Fear on PC, Mac, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One