Layers of Fear Mini Review

Layers of Fear is a psychological horror video game developed and published by a polish developer Bloober Team.  You play a disturbed painter who is trying to complete his ultimate work.  Navigating a Victorian mansion, with dark secrets to be uncovered about his life and work along the way.

I rarely talk about horror games (mostly because I am way too scared to play them!) however Layers of Fear drew my attention. The disturbed artist is a classic, nothing beats the disturbed creative type especially when they are based in a horror game.

The setting, a huge Victorian mansion, is a classical  setting. Aged wooden floorboards, wall panels and oil paintings fill the winding corridors and rooms. Of course there is also the compulsory thunderstorm outside and the age-old creaking house sounds. While such a setting is found in every horror game but Layers of Fear does the old classic well. Creating just the right atmosphere and using our own assumptions of the horror game mansion against us.

The story, without showing spoilers what I will say is that any story with a disturbed character in horror usually works out well. You played a troubled man with a fractured memory trying to piece together his final masterpiece and forgetting what he had done while consumed by his task. Wandering the halls of your family home you swear that the rooms have moved, how has it changed? That furniture was not there before… But it doesn’t matter only one thing does. Piece by piece you build your masterpiece and learn of what has fallen upon this house.

Layers of Fear is a great first person perspective horror filled with jump scares and all we have come to expect from this type of game but done in an amazing way that avoids it being cheesy and predictable. Nothing is more intense and more frightening than the forces that drive the artist to create especially when they consume everything. In a house of shifting rooms and frightening memories will the truth come out?