There’s rather a lot to admire about Layers of Worry, Polish studio Bloober Workforce’s new reimagining of its (comparatively) glorious surreal, psychological journey horror collection.
Developed alongside Anshar Studios, which beforehand assisted Bloober in increasing its sci-fi horror Observer in 2020, this new model of Layers of Worry compounds the unique 2016 sport, its DLC, Layers of Worry 2, a brand new DLC, and a brand new story meant to fill the gaps into one superbly complicated, decayed rose. However whereas the collection has by no means regarded higher—Layers of Worry was made with Unreal Engine 5—its narrative is contrived, choking typically by itself bold intricacies.
My disappointment is poetic. A lot of the characters the sport enables you to select—The Painter, his spouse The Musician, The Actor, and The Author, who’s launched to the collection for the primary time on this sport—undergo from the identical illness: getting squished underneath impractical aspirations. Via Layers of Worry’s divided chapters, I play every of them in first-person and piece collectively their distressing pasts by notes and their very own commentary.
Letters with scratched-out names, discovered sentimental objects like a cracked conch shell, and a barrage of enigmatic voiceover inform me that the Layers of Worry solid has been profitable in artwork earlier than, and they also’re decided to maintain striving, nonetheless unreasonable their targets begin to really feel within the sport’s morphing, pitch-black homes. Solely boring issues can maintain them again, earthly issues, just like the brown liquor The Artist is determined by, or the marred pores and skin stretched painfully over The Musician’s burnt fingers.
However these are non permanent setbacks—the splendor of their artwork and genius can’t be contained by one thing as small and imperfect as a physique, the characters recommend. So that they flip to the Rat Queen, the collection’ villain formally launched in 2019’s Layers of Worry 2, together with her lengthy enamel and black marble eyes, and she or he forces them to take her supernatural path to greatness.
Layers of Worry is my favourite strolling simulator
With its emphasis on piece-by-piece discovery and exploration, there isn’t a lot typical “gameplay” in Layers of Worry, so I spend the vast majority of my time in it digesting this info. The collection regularly has been known as, with just a little little bit of a scoff, a “spooky strolling simulator,” and that’s what I spend over 10 hours doing—strolling, and, typically, screaming at sudden sounds, like dissonant, echoing piano chords.
There aren’t choices to do much more. Except for strolling, I can run—or, extra precisely, stroll with extra DualSense suggestions—and choose objects up by hitting proper set off. I can zoom in on secret codes and puzzle options since they’ve all been modified from their authentic iterations, and within the Layers of Worry 2 part, I can crouch into vents.
Essentially the most vital gameplay adjustment between this Layers of Worry and former titles is the introduction of a handheld gentle supply. It isn’t notably stunning, but it surely breaks the collection’ passivity custom, for the reason that lights aren’t solely sensible, they’re violent. By hitting each triggers, my beam turns into incendiary, and I exploit it to singe a contemporary puzzle sort—it seems like a blurry blob and obscures exits and key objects—in addition to approaching enemies. For The Artist, who has shunned electrical energy in his palatial 1920’s dwelling, this implies pointing a glowing fuel lantern at visions of my lifeless spouse, who might or might not have deserved it, however different characters get to make use of flashlights to light up the rot round them.
Anyway, I don’t thoughts simply strolling. The sport’s degree and puzzle designs are immaculately unpredictable. They shift once I’m not wanting, and I get a nervous thrill from not figuring out what is going to occur if I flip again round. Will I discover a movie picture? A chopped-up finger? Am I about to get trapped in a looping hallway, or locked closet, or bed room with no home windows, or keys, or air to breathe?
That’s what makes Layers of Worry scary, and due to this fact entertaining. With its rebuilt graphics, the sport shapeshifts as convincingly as a terrified chameleon. If I look behind this empty image body, a door will seem. If I start to play this roll of movie, a giant, white moon will descend and enrapture me. It’s scary to maneuver with dedication towards uncertainty, and Layers of Worry exploits that, diffusing in me a tumbling ocean wave of unease.
However, oh, God, the story.
Layers of convoluted lore
That is what makes the sport each aggravating and interesting: If Layers of Worry had been an individual, it will stay its entire life with its head up its ass. It desires, someplace in its shifting staircases and infinite basements, to find the psychology behind nice artwork.
Since this can be a horror sport we’re speaking about, its interpretation of that psychology is unbearable. I perceive rapidly that the environments I’m in are bodily manifestations of artists’ looping ideas and cobwebbed instincts, knotted with steel chains and moist candle wax. A artistic thoughts is an uncomfortable and unsatisfying place, the sport tells me, and actually lays on the metaphor.
Layers of Worry routinely makes references to legendary artistic work like The Image of Dorian Grey, Faust, The Shining, and so forth, and I’m hit on the pinnacle with how essential artwork is; “Nice artwork carries a heavy value,” a notice says, “To create is to achieve into chaos,” a voiceover instructs. “Chaos is darkness. Heat. Gentle. Swarming. He understood it in the long run. Will you?”
Um, not likely, TBH.
Taking cues from its influences, Layers of Worry’s demon is the Rat Queen, who’s featured extra prominently within the added Author and Musician content material. However In contrast to Dorian Grey or Faust, during which males knowingly surrender their souls in trade for intercourse and information, the characters in Layers of Worry are traumatized individuals the Rat Queen coerces into pursuing unattainable perfection. In consequence, Layers of Worry isn’t a cautionary story about selfishness.
I don’t actually know what it’s. It factors out issues it desires me to really feel with out letting me really feel them. Essentially the most egregious case of this occurring is in The Musician’s DLC, the place discovered diary entries describe her home as a “jail.” Ultimately, I place a lifeless songbird again into its cage. Yeah, I get it.
Whereas one thing like Faust satirizes the tortured artist, conveying that artistic individuals aren’t essentially particular individuals, that they are often as dangerous as anybody, Layers of Worry appears to say that artwork is uncontrollable. It’s a hungry, magical pressure, and if a spouse, or a sister, or a daughter are caught and bloodied in its insatiable mouth then, nicely. So be it.
I discover that tough to simply accept. I believe it’s damaging, too, to contextualize artwork as one thing harmful and wild, nonetheless reverentially Layers of Worry phrases it. Artwork isn’t the boogeyman. It’s not the issue—individuals are, normally. Blaming a monster, just like the Rat Queen, feels too straightforward to me. That’s a story situation I’ve had with Layers of Worry for the reason that starting, and the brand new Author and Musician tales have sadly made it snowball.
Nonetheless, I’m impressed with Bloober’s ground-up transformation of its collection right into a compact nightmare with white rats. The sport is a present of energy, regardless of followers’ reservations for the studio’s upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, and I love a sport that cares about artwork as deeply as its characters do. I solely want that it weren’t so annoying about it.
