Layers of Fear

[Damascus Rose]

Gameplay wise it's pretty empty and un-interactive, and even story wise for the first little bit there's next to nothing to keep you going forward. But I found that once I progressed a little bit past the slow beginning and learned what's actually going on, it is kind of intriguing. Essentially you're playing an artist in the 1700s (or something) as he descends into madness. The house where the game takes place is constantly changing its rooms and all this weird shit keeps happening all around you, progressively getting more fucked up as you go along.

It's a neat concept, but the most impressive thing about it is the execution. For me at least, I found it extremely tense and at moments terrifying, this game does psychological horror better than any other game I've seen. The graphics and sound design/music really pull you into the atmosphere, then it scares the shit out of you. On paper, the formula sounds completely idiotic "walk into room, lock door, show some spoopy shit, walk out of room and realize it's a different room, repeat" but for the most part it worked really well. It's one of the few games where it lets your imagination run wild with things that could happen, then it actually shows you something on par with what you were afraid of. Like really, some of the shit really got under my skin in a weird way; I think this can really only be accomplished to this degree in a psychological horror game. I mostly played it at night though so that definitely contributed to how I felt about it.

The game isn't without some kinks, though, especially because it is in early access. I said I mostly played it at night, but I did play a chunk of it during the day and I found it somewhat boring with the lack of gameplay and story. The scares were also much less effective; this is one of those games where you can really only play at night to get any effect. It does seem to become a tad repetitive and predictable as you go on as well, but I can't say too much on that since I'm not sure if I even got near the ending. Will be finishing this game later with my buddy.

Overall I'd say horror fans should definitely give this one a go. It's not 10/10 but it's worth playing, and I'm sure the final release will be better since they said they cut out a chunk of the game to not spoil too much.



Another thing, I cannot play horror games by myself, especially at night. I don't know if I'm a massive pussy or just really sensitive to these sorts of things, but it's like this for most horror games I play. I just start shaking or getting goosebumps and getting super anxious and quiet, it just becomes too uncomfortable to play. After I played the beginning I retreated under the covers of my own bed scared as fuck and watched my friend play it, I even had to ask him to stop after a bit because it was too much. So keep in mind when I say this is super scary that I'm a massive bitch when it comes to these games. At this point it's really hard to understand why I'm so into horror games when they bring me this much discomfort. My friend didn't seem nearly as scared as me but he said he liked it a lot so that's something.