Editorials
[You Should Play This] ‘Layers of Fear’ Unravels an Increasingly Disturbing Mystery
“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
Judging from the unprecedented box office success of Kane Parsons’ Backrooms adaptation, you’ve likely already seen the liminal horror hit that managed to make audiences afraid of empty hallways and bad wallpaper. And now that so many of us have already entered the yellow labyrinth (some of us more than once), the time has come to discuss the spoiler-filled details that make the movie so fascinating in the first place.
And if there’s one element here that makes the Backrooms movie stand out from any previous lore/mythology, it has to be the genius addition of the Still Life entities. Warped recreations of real people that somehow wandered into the Complex, these misremembered creatures are responsible for some of the most disturbing imagery of 2026 – as well as laugh-out-loud memes created by one of the film’s very own concept artists.
However, true to Parsons’ word that the movie would rely heavily on practical effects, each of these distorted monsters was brought to life by real actors under heavy layers of makeup and prosthetics (with the occasional splash of CGI enhancements). While Anora and If I Had Legs I’d Kick You actress Ivy Wolk wasn’t among these performers, despite what Letterboxd might have you believe, the creature cast did benefit from veteran players with plenty of genre experience.
For starters, Alien: Romulus alumni Robert Bobroczkyi (who previously brought that film’s horrific Offspring to life during its most memorable sequence) plays the flick’s main antagonist, the Still Life version of Captain Clark. And though there was some obvious CGI involved in making the character’s peg-leg and nightmarish face more believable, Bobroczkyi’s monstrous performance and his natural 7’7″ frame helped to make that final chase sequence a clear highlight among this year’s genre offerings.
The film’s Texas-Chain-Saw-inspired “dinner” scene also features a freaky collection of less-aggressive Still Life creatures in the form of the Bearded Man, the Red-Headed Woman and, strangest of them all, the cheekily named “Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life” (who earned this title among fans and crewmembers as a reference to his apparent affinity for lamps).
While this was the first major horror outing for both Patrick Baynham (The Bearded Man) and Dana Mahmood (Archibald), Rhiannon Roberts has worked as a stunt performer in everything from Yellowjackets to HBO’s The Last of Us adaptation – which is probably why The Red-Headed Woman is the most active out of Clark’s impromptu “family.” That being said, the Archibald Leland Sutter Still Life is my personal favorite of the bunch simply because his anachronistic outfit suggests that the Backrooms phenomenon might be a lot older than the Async Foundation. I also love how hard he tries to be helpful with that little light of his!
That might be it for the Still Life entities, but I think horror fans will also be pleased to hear that the film’s Found Footage prologue stars none other than Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City star Avan Jogia as Naren Warne – and American Mary herself Katharine Isabelle also shows up in a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo at Mary’s house party towards the middle of the story (though I have a feeling that she originally had a bigger part that was likely cut for time).
At the end of the day, Parsons’ Backrooms may have been an auteur-driven project motivated by the young director’s unique take on the classic creepypasta, but film has always been a collective artform, so it’s fun to see just how many talented performers it takes to bring this kind of supernatural nightmare to life in a way that connects with so many people.
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