Layers Of Fear Analysis

If a tree falls in a forest with nobody present, does it make a noise? Does the moon exist when there's no-one to look at it? And is the hallway behind me still an ominous jumble of ornate casements and baleful oil paintings, or has it turned into something else? Layers of Fear makes space for plenty of gristle and gore during its five hour playtime, but the game's greatest weapon is simply the dread of objects misbehaving when left unobserved.

This is an anxiety games in general are well-placed to exploit - game design is, after all, as much a question of hiding as revealing, of quietly rolling out new enemies, areas and so forth while the player is distracted by a pretty explosion or, in this case, a copy of Francisco Goya's Saturn Devouring His Son. But it falls to horror designers to make a point of such deceptions, and if Layers of Fear is a little too aimless and beholden to cliche to recommend, it did often leave me afraid to look away.

The game casts players as a reclusive, alcoholic painter, attempting to finish a masterwork in the belly of a rotting mansion while sinking further and further into his delusions. The choice of an artist as protagonist allows for much gleeful poking of the
Player death (in the traditional sense, at least) and combat don't feature, and while that's great inasmuch as horror game combat has an abysmal rap, it does mean that you start thinking of the spooks as hoops to jump through, rather than obstacles. A smattering of bog-standard number or find-the-key puzzles aside, progress is a matter of working out what in the room you're supposed to be scared of, triggering it and making your exit. Fall afoul of manky ghost lady and the only things you stand to miss out on are collectibles that fill in the backstory - an incentive to be cautious, for sure, but hardly a compelling