The sea is essentially the blue skin of the world, yet we know so little of its depths. Like the vastness of the universe, it is full of mysteries. With both comes the unknown – and thus the dread. in Still Wakes the Deepthe latest first-person horror from The Chinese Room, the sea gives birth to a mysterious terror that takes over an oil rig, and its workers must fight to survive.
Somewhere in the middle of the ocean, players are introduced to the protagonist McLearly, a troubled electrician on a Scottish oil rig. From the beginning I was incredibly impressed with the voice acting, writing and performance. Most of the crew are Glasans, who use colloquialisms and slang that the game warns can be “translated” by turning on the subtitles. McLearly (Alec Newman, who plays Cyberpunk 2077is Adam Smasher and Divinity: Original Sin 2‘s Beast, among others) is a very likable protagonist. When we first meet him, he’s been fired for causing a coastal brawl that leads the police to the platform, much to the dismay of his boss. As he leaves in a helicopter, the platform hits something—or something hits the platform—deep below the surface.
From there, everything turns to chaos as bioluminescent tentacles and large sheets that look like seaweed begin to cover the entire platform. But when he interacts with people, he includes them and turns into horrible John Carpenter monsters. Thing.
McLearly must use his skills as an electrician to get out of the nautical nightmare. Environmental puzzles – involving turning levers and wheels, putting out fires, and pushing and pulling in the right order – make up most of your time, all the while the rig groans and falls apart and the screams of turned friends and colleagues echo. metal corridors.
The game is amazingly scary in places and I was impressed with the creature designs. The friends you meet at the beginning of the game now scream and belt out the threats and fears they had when they were fully human, their bodies permanently attached to the growing alien threat that has taken over the facility. (It’s never been explained what the threat is, a monster or a virus, only that it comes from the sea.) When stuck in these corridors with monsters, McLearly can only hide, throw objects, and sneak around. There is no combat and instant death, which can be somewhat frustrating. You’re never sure when or where a monster will hear you, and the game seems to have a very strict, internally consistent idea of ​​how to succeed in cat-and-mouse levels.
The game is incredibly tangible. The intuitive button mapping meant that I always felt like I was incarnated as McLearly, from pulling levers to climbing to descending ladders. The developers did a great job of putting you in McLearly’s shoes and letting you see his entire body as he climbs and crawls. McLearly unscrews the vents, grabs to drag himself through the dark water, slips and slides, screams and swears as he tries to make the jumps. In addition to feeling like I was embodying him, McLearly’s reactions to what he was doing also seemed to embody me: taking a big jump meant I cursed at times and laughingly found McLearly yelling the same when he landed.
As with previous Chinese Room titles, the original orchestral score is fat and loud when you finally hear it. But unlike They all went to Rapture, where Jessica Curry’s score did so much to tell this story, here it’s muted and several waves of music rush in. Much of the atmosphere comes from the collapse of the platform, the sound of destruction serving as music of destruction rather than power music. Choir. Jason Graves (composer of the horror titles Supermassive and Order: 1886) does a good job here, even if it doesn’t match Curry’s work.
The oil rig itself is impressively detailed, with its realistic textures and appropriate signage, old telephone controlled switches and realistic monitors. Even though you can’t interact with much of the world, you still feel like you’re living in it, a place people have occupied and made their own – especially when visiting individual crew quarters.
The level of detail combined with the excellent sound direction really made me feel like I was in gear. You’ll be forced to backtrack to areas and your familiarity will help you navigate the level: doors and corridors you walked through intact are now blocked by debris, or your friend has turned into a giant tentacled monster. I appreciated the developers’ strict focus on one specific location with limited areas, which allowed them to showcase the slow destruction in a way that was palpable.
Although it doesn’t take the genre anywhere new, Still Wakes the Deep is a worthy addition to the horror canon – and further proof that the great void of the ocean is something I want to avoid.
Still Wakes the Deep releases June 18 on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, and PC.