Review: Layers of Fear (Early Access)
Greetings once again gentle readers, for it is time for another review. This time we’ll be covering the Early-Access version of Bloober Team’s Layers of Fear, a first-person, psychological thriller that borrows inspiration from P.T., with a large dose of it’s own unique style. As a bit of a warning to folks, this game deals with a few sensitive issues, including mental illness, substance abuse, and, potentially, domestic violence.
It is never this sunny in the actual game.
Let me start off by saying that this title is in early access and as such is in no way a complete game. Instead, what we have is something of an extended demo. There are about two-thirds of a complete game here, which is enough to give a few hours of entertainment, but one must always keep in mind that the game does not, as of yet have an ending. With that made clear we shall proceed into the madness that is Layers of Fear.
The only thing that saves this archaeic load screen are the drippies coming off the bar.
Layers of Fear places us in the role of an unnamed artist and takes place some time in the first half of the last century. I would guess the 1930’s, but that’s merely supposition, as no clear date is ever given. Our protagonist is an amputee. One can discern that he lost his leg in a war, though this is again, supposition from items found around the house as it is never stated how he came by his injury. But the result is that you move about with a pronounced and noticeable limp. (Not unlike the gait you possess in Alone in Space, but faster and with the option to sprint.) Our protagonist has a wife and small child, but at the outset of the story they are nowhere to be found. The game opens with you wandering about a rather large, but empty house.
Though seemingly a tidy space.
You get the sense that something is “off” as you wander through the house, investigating every nook and cranny as you work to gain entry to your studio. Bits of our protagonist’s personality start to manifest themselves in the notes that lay strewn about, amongst other problems.
He might have a bit of a drinking problem.
Seems our friend has fallen on hard times and numerous personal tragedies have driven him inside of a bottle. Or in his case several bottles.
Okay, he might have a lot of a drinking problem.
But as dismal and dreary as this preamble might be, the terror does not begin until you pull the cloth from the easel and set to work. From there the game becomes a twisting, ever-changing journey into madness. It’s wild and morbid imagery revealing more and more about the events in the protagonist’s life, the fate of his family, and, indeed, that alcoholism is possibly the least of our protagonist’s problems.
He may also have a thing for apples.
Gameplay-wise the game plays like your typical first-person horror experience with a bit of a twist. In most games you move about the environment and poke things until they give up the goods. In Layers of Fear, you have to physically interact with everything in a rather realistic manner. That is to say that you manipulate everything with mouse movements. To open a door for example, you click on it as you would in most games of this type, but then you must swing the mouse to open it.
Be prepared to do a lot of this. A lot of this…
Drawers, cabinets, trunks, everything requires the same level of interaction, and it’s pretty great. Notes and examinable objects are just simple clicks, but once examined you can usually manipulate them somehow. In the case of documents once pulled up…
I remarked to my Fiancée that those looked more like hairs than they did scratches. She shuddered as she agreed.
Can be zoomed in on like this:
“Fiancé” needs an “e” at the end and anyone expecting a child out of wedlock, even an engaged couple at this time would be scandalous, but I’m just picking nits.
The zoom is often unnecessary, but it does come in handy on occasion. Some items can also be picked up and examined, with a rotation feature that reminds me greatly of the original Resident Evil’s. Often these items have no relevance to solving any of the game’s puzzles, and merely exist to help establish the game’s backstory. For example, early on in the game one discovers these spectacles:
Did I mention that this guy drinks?
Innocuous at first, next to a shattered frame, but on closer examination…
I think I have a pair like this somewhere in my apartment.
…We can see that they are damaged on one side, possibly the result of an altercation. The game relies heavily on the player filling in the blanks as to what is going on, as so many good games do. While cerebral leap-frogging isn’t technically a gameplay element, it is done so often in Layers of Fear that one could take it as such. The last bit of gameplay of major import is the puzzle solving. These don’t happen often, but there are some fairly excellent puzzles to be had. There are, of course, the standard “fetch item A and insert it into world-object B” type puzzles, but there are also number puzzles as well as puzzles that require you to look around at the environment, cause changes in this way, and then glean clues from it. (a la P.T.) Which brings us to our next point about this fine game. Homages. This game is, in some respects, a love letter to P.T. Not as much as the up and coming Allison Road, which I want to sink my teeth into so badly. (Are you listening, Lilith Ltd.?) but there are a fair amount of homages to the legendary Teaser to the game that will never be and they are all pretty decent. Take this hallway for example:
This particular bit of hallway is on an infinite loop, (until you solve the puzzle here,) and features audio of a ringing telephone. Even the eggshell colour palette echoes that distinctive bit of corridor, but even more on point is monster stalking the ever-changing halls of the artist’s house. The identity of this entity remains ambiguous, but you, oh gentle readers, should be able to suss it out for yourselves. In any event, she will often appear to kill our protagonist, including at a point where you are advised not to look behind you. And much like the teaser to which this game is paying homage, you will be treated to a cut-scene of a woman with grotesque injuries snuffing out your proverbial candle.
Speaking of candles, much like P.T. You also find yourself in a recurring location whenever this maligned monstrosity snuffs your gubbins. In this case it’s a bit of s summoning circle, or a circle of protection with a ring of candles lying within a dilapidated room.
Magic circles, artisans with artificial limbs, pretty sure this is not the homage you are looking for.
The circle and the title-referencing graffiti may allude to the talking board featured in the game’s Halloween trailer:
But this element is not premise in this version of the game. Instead we have the artist’s studio as the pivotal centre piece to the game’s design. And what a design it is! Pulling past the obvious homages discussed above, you will discover that the game has its own very unique voice. A voice which it chooses to exercise often and loudly. Interestingly, you may enter several iterations of the same room during the course of the game, each vastly different from the last, but bearing the same traits as the original room you encountered in the prologue. As you move from room to room, the house feels organic, as a thing alive with malevolence and contempt, as if all the pain and torment of the past as burst forth from the solid confines of the house’s structure. You’ve heard the phrase “If these walls could talk…” I’m sure. But in this case it is “If these walls could contort into something beyond your fevered imagining…”
The ceilings aren’t best pleased either.
And all the while, the studio, which acts as a sort of hub which you return to at the conclusion of each chapter and from which you start the next, changes and alters along which each new discovery you make about the artist. These discoveries take the form of items, “trophies” if you will, that are collected usually shortly before the conclusion of a chapter and are displayed in cabinets that start out locked. At the centre of the studio lies an easel containing the artist’s unfinished work. This too changes with each passing chapter, as you wipe away the old image to reveal the new, which manifests as a horrifying abstract along with words above the doorway, providing a cryptic clue as to the theme of the next chapter.
But certainly not forgotten.
Similar messages also appear throughout the course of the rooms and hallways you explore, usually these contain the same sort of cryptic scrawlings as the studio, with messages that pertain to the story while retaining a high level of the esoteric.
“Hope is the little-death that brings total obliteration.”
Other graffiti is geared specifically at the protagonist. These are short, often brutal criticisms, or semi-antagonistic questions written in fairly obvious places along your path. These often reveal as much about the protagonist and the tragedies that have befallen his household as the myriad of notes you find in drawers and cabinets around the house.
Sheesh, tell us how you really feel!
These notes, are interesting, by the way, as they mostly appear to be between the protagonist and his wife. I do not wish to spoil anything major, but I do recommend paying close attention to the handwriting on these notes as it factors subtly into the plot in a most wonderful way. The notes themselves are generally Passive aggressive. Quite possibly some of the most passive aggressive stuff I have seen since my days of frequenting http://www.passiveaggressivenotes.com/:
Apparently the passive-agressiveness is contagious.
But the over-arching theme in every room of the artist’s madhouse is the artwork. The works of great baroque artists peak out from every wall, and the metamorphosis of the rooms is often reflected in the transmutation of these works from their real-world forms to something strange or even grotesque.
Would you believe this was a self portrait of Peter Paul Rubens?
The various puzzles and mysteries encountered often have clues within the works of art adorning halls and parlours of the house and even when there are not, there is always some new piece to examine and enjoy, or to become horribly corrupted by the influence of the house as you move through it’s ever-changing spaces…
Some things started off as slightly horrible.
So the design is superb, but what of the atmosphere? Well, gentle readers, that happens to be pretty darn fantastic as well. When the house is “normal” things are somber, quiet. Some of the same feelings evoked by Serena are present as you move through an empty, dusty house. Outside a storm rages, a portent of the terror to come. Once you begin the game proper, the atmosphere shifts into the strange and macabre. Nothing feels right, and there is always a sense that something terrible could happen at any moment. I appreciate a game where you finish going through a room, open a door and instantly say: “Well, that can’t be good.
Some of you may use up your “nope” supply for a month or so.
But the main feeling you get is just wrongness. There are few moments of equilibrium, and when they do manifest, even those throw you off as by the time you reach them, you are becoming more or less used to the strangeness and then BAM. A brief pocket of normalcy or near normalcy before delving back into the horrendous and the macabre.
Just another Tuesday in this household.
The sound is also on par with the rest. From the limping footsteps as you move through the halls to the eerie noises permeating the atmosphere to the touches of well executed music, the sound design is absolutely on point. The moaning of the floorboards and the creak of the doors and cabinets add a level of realism and immersion to a game that already has that in spades. The voice-acting is also excellent. Veteran voice actor Erik Braa delivers a haunting performance as the protagonist and I look forward to hearing more dialogue in the completed game. So far there’s been a lot said for what this game does well, but is there anything it doesn’t?
Well they’ve locked in the steampunk crowd…
Most of the game is executed very well. The game has been thoroughly researched and aside from a few small historical quibbles, I have no qualms there. The one thing that does bother me is that the game is occasionally somewhat hard to navigate. There are a lot of dark spaces, and a few in particular stand out.
There’s no hand-held light source in Layers of Fear, and that’s good. Too many games rely on the mechanic of “Dark and scary, but at least I have my trusty flashlight!” A departure from that is certainly welcome, but it makes the areas that are this dark nearly impossible to navigate without turning the brightness up to “Night Blind” levels. There are also, very rarely, glitches or misplaced world objects:
Interestingly, the door to the cabinet wouldn’t open all the way, so I’m only 90% sure this is a glitch.
By and large, however, this game is more solid than a lot of complete games I’ve played. In the few hours I spent playing through it I only encountered a couple of things you could call bugs and as I said, I wasn’t even sure about all of them. In general, this game is locked down tight.
Silent Hill 4: The Room – 1932 Edition.
In conclusion, this is one of the better horror experiences I’ve had as of late, and I am proud to make this my first review of 2016. I will admit that I was a little disappointed when gameplay abruptly ended, but I am thoroughly looking forward to the next release and to playing this game when it is completed. To be honest I could say that finding out that there was no ending was the creepiest thing about this game, but I’d be lying…
Atmosphere: 9
Design: 10
Gameplay: 10
Sound: 9
Story: 8
VERDICT:Fun and entertaining and more than enough to put the scare into most folks.
Layers of Fear is available for $12.99 on Steam and is, as mentioned, in Early Access, but I Highly recommend grabbing it anyway and helping to support this great game!
“Draw me like one of your French girls”
Disclaimer: The reviews on FEARLESS are purely the opinion of the author. No gratuity or compensation was given for this review.
