Thursday 9 January 2020

Layers of Fear

An art project gone wrong.

In this Unity made, heavily railroaded walking simulator, you must explore a painter's creepy house in which you have almost no agency what so ever. You will literally have the rooms you walk through shift simply by turning around because apparently that's scary? At least there are jump scares to try keep you interested, and to be fair the house and interior decorations are very nice.

Unfortunately, they are also very interactive - in most cases pointlessly so, showcasing how little the designer knows about being player friendly. Want to open a door? Move the mouse cursor to the handle then drag it open. No, not click - and definitely not a single key press. That would be too passe. Same for opening drawers or pulling chains.

It's an impressive looking piece of shit.

The other problem is the save checkpoints are so far apart, you'll literally be pushing forward for the sake of doing so just to reach the next one, right past jump scares and even into the "enemies" who knock you out... and... then let you continue walking? It's been a long time since I played a game that was putting me to sleep and Layers of Fear did exactly that. Despite being pretty, it's boring, poorly designed, and only has worth being thrown into a dumpster fire. I give it half a can of paint out of 5. Don't bother playing it.

Also, because this game was so terrible I've opted to just skip Observer, another game made by these same developers, outright. No point in wasting my time in environments I don't enjoy and based on some reviews, Observer plays a lot like this one.

Insight: If you do play it and go into the basement, you'll need to ouija "Exit" to go back to the real game. Apparently that's a Halloween add on or something?

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