Layers of Fear is one of the most bizarre and mind-bending games I have ever played. Layers of Fear is what I imagine Bob Ross would see in his nightmares. The premise behind this psychological horror game is that you’re a troubled painter trying to create his final work of art. He used to be one of the most critically acclaimed artists but has since fallen from his greatness and become a laughing stock. He decides he is going to prove to everyone he still has this talent built up in him, all he has to do is find out where he’s hiding it. When he finally sits down to start his magnum opus, he finds himself in this twisted world of madness. He must navigate through this personal hell to find the proper materials to paint his masterpiece. Along your journey, you will learn about this man’s haunted past and learn about why you may be seeing some of these twisted and horrific things.
The story in Layers of Fear is a disturbing one. I found myself cringing at some of the details I was reading through the series of notes I had been picking up. I was somewhat disgusted, but in a good way. The game tells its story primarily through notes found in the house the game takes place in. So, if you just blaze through the game not reading any of the notes you might be totally confused as to what the game was about. Players are rewarded with exploration and taking the time to stop and read the grizzly notes. The notes are so detailed and disgusting they might fill your head with horrifying images. I honestly preferred reading the story instead of having it told to me. My imagination filled in some of these haunting details with ghastly images I would prefer not to see. It felt like a refreshing and creative way to tell a story like this. The game has such a great ending that I obviously won’t spoil, it’s almost heartbreaking. I genuinely felt sad for the main character. Even though it’s a bit sad, it’s incredibly satisfying for the story this game is trying to tell.
I’ll be honest, Layers of Fear isn’t super scary. But it is incredibly unsettling, it will make you uneasy. It may not give you chills down your spine the whole time you’re playing it, but there are moments where I was genuinely creeped out. The atmosphere of the house you are in is just unsettling. Some of the things you see are so weird and twisted, you kind of have to stop and just take a minute to comprehend what you just witnessed.
The game loves to play with your mind. You’ll walk into one room, you see all the furniture and whatnot. Turn around and try to walk out the door you came in, it’s locked. Turn back around to face the room again and everything is different. Furniture may be floating or you may just be in a completely different room somehow. The game constantly toys with you for hours. I played this game in one sitting for roughly 6-7 hours and the game began to mess with me to the point I began seeing things that weren’t actually there. I am honestly scared to go replay the game to get the achievements I missed because I am afraid I may develop some sort of mental illness!
Layers of Fear is rich with little details that enhance the experience for people who have an eye for these things. One of the smallest details that they really didn’t need to include is the fact your character walks with a limp. I didn’t even notice until about halfway through the game. As you play the game, it’ll explain why your character walks with this limp but typically you don’t see games implement details like this for the entire game! As I mentioned previously, the game loves to toy with your head. The game loves to change small details in the environment just to mess with you. Paintings slowly deform, objects might move, etc. The game has a crazy attention to detail. I saw so many clever uses of the environment, I don’t want to spoil everything so I will leave it to you to experience some of the creepy and clever uses of the environment.
I only have a couple of problems with Layers of Fear, but they aren’t bad enough to keep me from recommending the game. The frame rate is probably the biggest problem. The game constantly stutters and the frame rate drops to what feels like 10-15 FPS. It can really ruin a really intense scary moment and take you out what would be an immersive moment. It seems like they didn’t really take the time they were given in between the Game Preview program’s release and the final product to fix these issues as they have been prevalent since it released in October.
My only other problems are that the game feels like it may slightly go on for too long and it tries to be weird for the sake of being weird. As I mentioned previously, it took me about 6-7 hours to beat this game. The game feels like it may just go on a bit too long. It feels like it could have ended a bit sooner than it did. I was beginning to get more annoyed instead of scared by the end, they were pulling the same tricks on me over and over and it felt like it was getting old very quickly. Luckily, this only happened about 30 minutes before the game actually ended. If the game didn’t have a satisfying ending and didn’t end shortly after I started to feel fatigued, I would probably dock a few points off the game’s final score.
I mentioned the game pulls some of the same tricks multiple times and it begins to feel repetitive. Not only does it do the same things over and over, sometimes it feels as if it is just putting out of place “scares” in for the sake of meeting some sort of quota. There isn’t much time to recuperate after seeing some of the deranged stuff in the game, there is no breathing room unless you literally stop. Some could say that is a plus, but I personally find it as a negative. It means you know there is going to be something around almost every corner. There is no surprise to it.
Summary
While Layers of Fear has some minor issues and couldn’t have suffered from maybe some extra polish for the technical aspects, it is still a great experience that I would recommend once it falls in price a bit. If you could grab this for $10 or less, this game is great! It has an intriguing story with many unsettling aspects and it does a lot of clever things using the game’s environment. It is a fantastic game that takes notes from great horror experiences like P.T. If you love psychological horror you will love Layers of Fear.
Cade is a games journalist, Gaming Writer at ComicBook.com. They contributed 108 articles to ICXM between 2015–2017, focused on opinion pieces, game reviews, and Xbox news: served as Editor-in-Chief at GameZone before joining ComicBook.com.