Because of this, the house is littered with creepy paintings babies and weird-looking dudes, you know the types. Your character is a painter who’s left the pastel watercolours behind him and made the transition into the blackness-of-the-soul kind of artistry. It’s the smart use of paintings in the game that really adds a whole new dimension to proceedings an extra layer of fear, if you will (snigger). Especially with what it does with those goddamn paintings. From creepy laughing children, to signs saying “don’t look back” (guess what happens if you look back?), the whole clichéd horror gang’s here.īut it’s what Layers of Fear does with all these traditional elements, that makes it such a nerve-shredding journey into hell. Bloober Team calls upon all the well-worn horror tropes to get you on the edge of your seat. The frights in Layers of Fear are nothing new though. Probably to a tonne of jump-scares, no doubt. And the doors behind you lock, leaving you on a path leading lord knows where. There is no clear logic to the layout of the game – the rooms in the house change every time you enter them. And this is precisely what Layers of Fear does best twisting everything you see in the game into a surrealistic, senseless nightmare. With the horror leaning towards the psychological variety then, it gives the developers carte blanche to mess with your head. And progress through the game is your attempt to navigate, and come to terms with, the horrific crimes you’ve committed. You appear to be the protagonist at first, but it transpires you might actually be the antagonist of the story yes, you could very well be the killer. You’re also given the whole ‘unreliable narrator’ vibe in Layers of Fear.

If you’ve ever read the excellent, mind-bending book, House of Leaves, then you might gain a semblance of the diseased roots where both games stem from. Playing in a first-person perspective, you try to make your way through a house that doesn’t want to play nice with reality. Layers of Fear is, in many ways, the full-length game of that P.T. But was it that scary? Let’s reassess the whole nightmare. Developed by Polish studio, Bloober Team, the game was released in 2016 to much acclaim and gasps of “what the f**k was that?” from everyone who played it. And surprise – that’s not a good place to be. Because Layers of Fear was your gateway into the mind of a psychotic killer. We say “best”, but what we actually mean is “horrific”. But seeing as we’d never get that game, we got the next best thing – Layers of Fear. Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro’s Silent Hills demo was a pure proof-of-concept the concept being your utter dribbling terror. before Konami killed it, you probably know true gaming fear. If you were one of the lucky ones who downloaded P.T.

Layers of fear pt