Haunted House Exploration: Bloober Team

Haunted House Exploration

Layers of Fear features slow-paced exploration-based gameplay with the occasional puzzle introduced for variety's sake. As is typical for games of this genre, Bloober Team's primary interest isn't in challenging you, but rather to pique your investigative interest with an enticing mystery to solve. Therefore, your interaction with the world is limited to opening doors, picking up and inspecting objects, and looking in the right direction at the right time. Layers of Fear comes with contextual pictograms alerting you when an action may be performed which works well. Therefore, Layers of Fear's control scheme feels immediately familiar.

The ever-changing architecture of Layers of Fear's level design is its biggest selling point. Bloober Team executes it exceptionally well, and progression is often tied to observing the world in a particular way - the marriage between the visuals and the exploration is one made in heaven. And considering there isn't any geography for the player to internalize, pathfinding issues sometimes plaguing the genre is a non-issue in Layers of Fear - everything you might need is in your immediate vicinity. In addition to featuring prominently in the progression of the narrative, Bloober Team also derives most of Layers of Fear's scares from the tentative architecture of the mansion. And while they
work well initially, to the point I was apprehensive to turn around, Bloober Team's overreliance on similar scares, something is in your face when you turn around, rendered them ineffectual in the latter half of the game. The prevalence of cheap jump scares is disappointing when contrasted to the memorable set pieces also made possible by the mechanic.

Some rudimentary inventory and item-based puzzles, as well as logical ones, provides variety in Layers of Fear. And while most of the items you will come across are keys for nearby doors, there are some instances where you will need to ascertain where to use it - all of these puzzles (if you can call them that) are incredibly easy to solve. As a matter of fact, it's more difficult locating the item than discerning where to use it since interactable objects aren't highlighted in Layers of Fear. The logical-based puzzles, on the other hand, are slightly more complicated, and in-tune with the game. For the most part, these puzzles revolve around observing a number combination in the environment you can then use to open a lock.

Layers of Fear's narrative-driven and exploration-based moment-to-moment gameplay loop works well, thanks in large part to the extraordinary audiovisual design, initially. Because of Bloober Team's overreliance on the same mechanics, and their failure to evolve them over the course of the game, Layers of Fear feels like an exercise in repetition. For what is included, Layers of Fear is simply too long; it awards the player the time to peek behind the curtain and see how the sausage is made - Layers of Fear outstays its welcome.

Looks The Part

The success of Layers of Fear's gameplay, as well as narrative, hinges on the quality of the audiovisual presentation - and it delivers in spades. Bloober Team calls upon a soundtrack that primarily consists of dark, foreboding ambient drones which facilitate the eerie, unwelcoming atmosphere accompanying exploration. However, it was the occasional melodious arrangements of vocalizing, piano, and downright heavenly string sections reveling in melancholy that soundly impressed me. These musical interludes captioned the more poignant scenes of the narrative and helped reinforce their tragedy expertly. A masterful usage of environmental sound effects accompanies the soundtrack and in conjunction they aid in immersion well. The crackling of distant thunder, contemplative, slightly apprehensive footsteps, and the pitter patter of rain against the roof elicits a mournful atmosphere early on while the twisted screeches and sinister laughter of later portions convey hostility and outright hatred.

However, the most impressive aspect of Layers of Fears design is undoubtedly the excellent visual presentation.
As previously mentioned, the tentative architecture of the mansion becomes an integral part of the gameplay itself. Bloober Team comes up with increasingly elaborate ways to twist the player's sense of perspective and geographical bearing. And they should be applauded for how organic and, in the context of the narrative, natural the transitions feel. It's a shame then that Bloober Team relies too heavily on it to manufacture jump scares, to the point where it diminishes some of the marvel it elicited
initially.

And while the transitory effects of the mansion's tentative architecture are immediately more recognizable, Bloober Team has done a great job with the environmental design overall in Layers of Fear. Exemplified by the gradual degradation of the mansion's interiors, what displayed a quiet dignity early on is rendered a dilapidated ruin in harmony with the protagonist's descent into madness. In particular, the areas associated with the daughter are extremely effective. Her pristinely maintained bedroom elicits sorrow on the initial visit, but becomes terrifying on subsequent ones - Layers of Fear have a surprise for you if you are afraid of Victorian era porcelain dolls.

Final Verdict

Layers of Fear starts off incredibly strong, with an intriguingly mysterious narrative and trepidatious exploration-based gameplay, it loses some of its luster in the latter half of the game due to overreliance on the same mechanics. An excellent audiovisual presentation helps matters profusely, but in the end is unable to salvage it. There are moments of brilliance to uncover for those brave enough to venture into the mansion, however, only fans of the genre and horror aficionados should do so.