While you may think going through room to room would get stale, Layers of Fear doesn’t allow it to feel like that. Gameplay rarely feels as though you’re just doing the same old thing over and over again, particularly because there’s just so many different ways you, as a player, can progress throughout the story. It can mean restarting the whole chapter again, as the game only seems to save when you enter the room where you are painting your masterpiece, yet another frustrating mechanic that is featured in Layers of Fear.īut looking past the poor save points, Layers of Fear truly does like to keep you on your toes. There was one puzzle where you had to figure out the right numbers to put them into an Ouji board, however, if you hadn’t picked up a note previously then you are doomed for failure as you’re now locked in a room with no way of knowing what the answer is. Gameplay isn’t necessarily punishing, but it can be difficult at times to understand what you have to do, so missing things on your first playthrough is a given. The game is giving you a choice that links directly to not only the artist’s mental well being but yours too: will you embrace the madness of the pitch-black room or will you avoid it at all costs and go the safer route? You may think that this is just the game giving you two scary options, even with one dressed up in a warm, inviting manner, but that is not the case. It becomes quite clear early on in the game that the painter isn’t mentally sound, which is a trope that is shown in probably 70% of most horror games, right? What makes Layers of Fear different is how madness is shown through thrilling gameplay that twists and changes to correlate with your previous decisions.įor example, you come to a hallway and there are two different rooms that branch out in other directions, one room is barely lit and you can hear the sound of a baby crying inside, whereas the other room is well-lit and the only sound you can hear is a gramophone playing in the background. The game touches on themes of madness and sacrifice. Our nameless painter? He uses blood, skin, hair and the hobby of gouging out his dead wife’s eye. You’re no doubt sitting there, scratching your head, wondering ‘how, how can he create the perfect painting when his life sucks so damn hard?’ Well, some people use drink to get through tough times. You play as a well-acclaimed nameless artist who has recently lost both his wife (through suicide) and his daughter, leaving him in a state where his only purpose in life is to seemingly create the perfect painting. I’ll set the scene, however, you should expect spoilers. Unlike most horror games where there will be instances where the game forces you into an area where terrible things happen, this game it’s entirely up to you where you can go and what makes it better is that these choices are there for a very, very good reason: the characterization of the nameless protagonist you play. Layers of Fear changes that completely, and what makes it so refreshing is that it’s up to you on how scared you want to be. While the console has games like Outlast 2 to its name, there weren’t too many games that really had the good scare factor that left us quaking in our boots and peeing our pants. In all seriousness, Layers of Fear: Legacy is a game that couldn’t have come sooner to the Nintendo Switch. Not satisfied with making everyone on PC, Xbox and PlayStation cry themselves to sleep in fear, the Bloober Team have decided to take their horror game, Layers of Fear: Legacy, to the next level: importing it to the Nintendo Switch! Now you can be scared whilst on the go, and heck, isn’t that what all horror fans want? Layers of Fear: Legacy made me pee a little.
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