Layers of Fear is a psychological horror game. It's beautiful in many ways, and barely alive in others.
While I do recommend you to play through this game, I do think it does more excellent in some areas, and not so well in others.
While I do recommend you to play through this game, I do think it does more excellent in some areas, and not so well in others.
Overall Art Audio Story Gameplay | 5/10 10/10 8/10 5/10 2/10 |
Art and audio
The art style and visuals is A++. Super creative. This is for me enough reason to play the game. The visuals are extremely beautiful. It's hard to capture in images, because it is all about motion. But I tried anyways.
The audio is just as well as the visuals, beautiful - but sometimes cheap sounds are used like screams or baby noises, while they don't really belong.
The audio is just as well as the visuals, beautiful - but sometimes cheap sounds are used like screams or baby noises, while they don't really belong.
Story
In Layers of Fear, we follow a painter who has gone crazy mad. You play inside his insanity and recall what lead him to his current madness. This by itself is very clever, but there could have been much more to this story. The execution of this, however, is well done - as you wander around the game, you can never be too certain about the next thing that will happen. At least not in the first hour that you play the game.
Puzzles
The puzzles are way too easy. All they ask of you is to search and find 3 numbers, with a VERY few exceptions.
Gameplay
There's not much of a game. You just walk around, meet a jumpscare once in a while and that's pretty much it.
I didn't really get immersed, only for the first half hour - then you get used to repeating patterns. There's no real challenge. You can be very sleepy and still beat this game.
This game is to be played for the experience, not for gameplay. If you are hoping for actual gameplay you will get very dissapointed. I would almost say the game would have been better without the puzzles.
I didn't really get immersed, only for the first half hour - then you get used to repeating patterns. There's no real challenge. You can be very sleepy and still beat this game.
This game is to be played for the experience, not for gameplay. If you are hoping for actual gameplay you will get very dissapointed. I would almost say the game would have been better without the puzzles.
Conclusion
The game has such high production value, and it is honestly a shame to see such a bad game design (sorry to whoever designed it) on a game with so many talented and creative people in it. The game, in some parts, just feels shallow.
If Layers of Fear had linear progression, harder puzzles and did not use cheap jumpscares as the only mean of horror, I believe this had the potential to be a really good game. But wow, it was so pretty.
If Layers of Fear had linear progression, harder puzzles and did not use cheap jumpscares as the only mean of horror, I believe this had the potential to be a really good game. But wow, it was so pretty.