March 28, 2024

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Layers of Fear is a first person horror game,which simply puts us in a ride like never before. It is a game about obsession, as we have seen before how video games can deliver obsessive nature of one person driven by his passion at the same time. Layers of Fear is somewhat like that but with more spine chilling story and creepy background musics.

The game does not actually falls in a Silent Hills P.T, nor a very psychological horror category. Developer Bloober team themselves termed this game as “psychedelic game”. But in the end, the final game is somewhere between those two categories where they kept it just perfect mixing the two.

The main protagonist, who is a former well-to-do painter is disturbed is trapped both inside a 19th century house and his own securities. As he proceeds to explore the house more and more, it begins to change. The Hallways and the Rooms turns back in on themselves, furnitures begins to float, the picture begins to melt and an image of another unknown artist becomes more stronger as the game progresses.

Layers of Fear does not waste any time getting creepy. It has a short introduction on how the house that you will be in is like and then your objective will be clear. There are six components that are missing and you will have to collect all of them. Each component will have challenges and mazes lying ahead of them and yes, there are absolutely no shortage of jumpscares. The environment in this game is somewhat cliched, where I hear babies crying, books falling from the shelves seemed very cliched. But make no mistake, they somehow sent a chill up my spine as I was playing in the creepy environment.

Fortunately, the game is not complex. It has a straight forward gameplay with easy puzzles where you won’t get stuck and probably won’t rage quit. The main problem in this game is the story. It is just an ordinary over the top story about obsession and to go and set things right which often ruined by creepy dolls models which was not needed in the time.

The story is about an artist who falls from public disgrace for the reasons that contains alcoholism and losing custody of a child. This game focused solely on the disease of the protagonist than the main cause which somewhat feels dull at the end of the game. The gameplay is like nothing I saw before. The creepy environment along with paintings taking turns and some cliched mechanics made it really haunted which I enjoyed.

The plot altogether was very mediocre as they could have done a great job with this concept but they did’nt,which is a disappointment.

My Final Verdict, Layers of Fear is fun,scary, exaggerated and an adrenaline trigger. But eventually you will forget about the thing that you were afraid of in the first place. I give this a 6.5 out of 10.