Layers of Fear is a psychological horror game that invites players to step into the disturbed mind of a tormented artist. With its mesmerizing blend of atmospheric storytelling and spine-chilling visuals, Layers of Fear pulls gamers once more into an unsettling journey through the depths of madness.
If this sounds eerily familiar, don’t worry – you’re not going insane. Layers of Fear is an artistic remake of all the Layers of Fear titles plus a bonus story in Unreal Engine 5. If the first playthrough wasn’t enough for you, prepare to sink your teeth into the POV of the Writer: a mother and creative that is slowly but surely falling prey to the same Rat Queen that plagued all our characters. Or was she ever there at all?
Layers of Fear’s sinister and enigmatic allure still seeps through the screen as it did in the first game, as the story weaves a tale that blurs the line between reality and hallucination. Wielding the brush of the Painter, I navigated the halls of my crumbling mansion, re-living the nightmares, flames, and horrors that brought me to this singular point in our life. One of my favorite things about the Painter’s story, is that he is very obviously not a great guy. He’s selfish, jealous, obsessive, and at times downright abusive. This makes it incredibly hard to side with him and immediately throws up red flags of him being an unreliable narrator. However, we’re on the edge of our seats because we want to know why he is the way he is. Why did he do these horrible things, and how much of this is a hallucination?
Every step you take in Layers of Fear has you questioning what is right from wrong. From the moment I met the core “antagonist” of the series and had to make the decision to hold my ground or flee, I was constantly in a state of terror and doubt. What if I wasn’t supposed to run away? What if I was meant to face my fears? Was I doing more harm than good? The beautiful ray-tracing and light particles that shone through the hallway windows just seemed to taunt me more than anything. Beautiful, peaceful, floating particles that drifted undisturbed in a looping horror of madness and uncertainty.
The ever-shifting walls and hallways were a creepy niche at first that soon started to wear on me when I began to miss collectibles. The first chapter I completed a painting fully and was extremely proud. The second chapter, I missed a piece. As the horror and psychological abuse ramped up, more chase sequences and twisting turns had me eager to get to safety and paranoid that I would miss a vital piece of lore or painting. If I could change anything about this game, it would be to not hide vital lore bits or collectibles in a sequence where the player must run for their life. At that point, it just seems cruel.
While you can deter the antagonist for brief periods with your lantern, it never felt long enough to give you time to hunt for those collectibles. There are other points within the story where it’s also not entirely clear if you need to stand your ground or follow the retreating rats. Only after a dozen failed scenarios of trying to burn and advance past her did I finally realize that I wasn’t awful at the game – I had just misread the situation. Maybe that still makes me awful, but I felt like a completely idiot, and I don’t think that’s what the developers were trying to accomplish with that scene.
If you missed some vital clues or didn’t pick up on earlier pieces of lore, there often seemed to be gaps in the story. I did my best to collect every single scrap of paper and painting I could find, but I couldn’t help but feel sorry for those that might have missed something due to tunnel vision or running in fear. The POV and dialogue from the Painter gives you a vague enough idea to progress through the story, but there is definitely some meat missing if you don’t take your time to collect all the pieces.
The final ending of the original story left me feeling really tired and bleak. While I tried my hardest to collect everything I could and to prioritize my family over everything else, I (like most players) ended up with the Loop ending, where everything keeps repeating and you never gain any true closure. This was pretty frustrating as I felt like I had done everything in my power to choose correctly, but in the end it just didn’t matter. Such is the life of the Painter, I suppose. What is done is done, and there’s nothing he can do to bring his family back.
I did really enjoy the breaks in-between story to see things happening from the Writer’s POV, though at some point we seemed to have jumped forward a chunk of time and missed out on a lot of context. Another mystery to be solved by notes and journal entries scattered around the lighthouse the Writer inhabits. While I didn’t have enough time to go through the Actor’s story, I am nonetheless looking forward to diving back into that world as it was originally my favorite! If it anything like the first Layers of Fear title remake (gorgeous lighting, atmospheric, dark) then I fully expect it to dwarf my love of all the others in the series.
Another great part about this remake is that it now includes all the Layers of Fear games in the series. While you had to make multiple purchases before, you can now have them all in one and go back and experience the individual chapters to experience different outcomes.
