An oil rig is a location already terrifyingly dense with phobia triggers; heights, drowning, isolation, chilly, electrocution, darkness, hearth and tight areas. So, it’s fairly a setting for a horror video game, even earlier than the deep-sea drill hits an eldritch – one thing that actually shouldn’t be disturbed – within the opening minutes of Still Wakes the Deep.
This newest combat-free horror expertise from British developer The Chinese Room (Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs) brilliantly captures the claustrophobia, grime and ambiance of a creaking steel construction mounted to the ocean ground miles from civilisation, whereas additionally invoking iconic horror cinema of the Seventies.
A powerful script and predominantly Scottish solid of characters provides to the masterful show of pressure, though it falls simply wanting superb – each as a game and as a story.
The foreboding setting and tense however acquainted interactions between the rig staff jogged my memory of John Carpenter’s The Thing, which bore out as a clear affect as soon as the proverbial keech hit the fan.
Helped alongside by a grainy cinematic presentation and pitch-perfect decor, the Beira D rig and its inhabitants really feel ripped straight from a film theatre of fifty years in the past, and our protagonist Caz is a nice reluctant hero.
An electrician who is comparatively new to the rig, Caz is pleasant and heat with the remainder of the crew, however is clearly hiding a darker aspect. He has taken a job on the Beira D in an try and dodge the regulation, after committing some type of assault.
The scenario devolves quickly when one thing appears to contaminate the rig, leaving Caz to deal not solely with firm forms however the double-horror of a collapsing construction and colleagues who’ve been grotesquely remodeled into murderous appendages of a veiny deep-sea nightmare. From there, the game switches between tense navigation of the wrecked, swaying, sinking construction and pulse-pounding encounters with vicious fiends who appear to recollect their lives and are fixated on remorse and escape.
Subtly, the game appears to counsel a parallel between Caz figuratively working from his issues and actually working for his life. Even with the assistance of his mates, each plan of survival solely appears to make issues worse and, on the finish of the day, they’re actually out at sea. It is solely alongside these strains that the game hits upon one thing really disturbing and horrific, as you take into account whether or not Caz’s determination to keep away from accountability means he won’t ever see his household once more.