Horror games are extremely popular once again, although many of the newest titles shy away from traditional narrative horror for other sub-genres, like the liminal horror of Pools or the anomaly-spotting horror found in games like Shinkansen 0 and the I’m On Observation Duty series. There is even a horror title set in a call center called Home Safety Hotline these days. But while most of those aforementioned games are high quality and fun to play, none of them are really scary in a traditional sense, and none of them can really be defined as narrative horror where there is a detailed story, compelling characters and a well-crafted plot that adds to the horror.
Because of that, I was extremely happy to hear that developer The Chinese Room, which is well known for making one of the best entries in the Amnesia series, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, was getting back into narrative horror. The Chinese Room almost always makes amazing narrative-based adventures, whether they are horror games or not. Titles like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and the classic walking sim Dear Esther help to round out their portfolio. And yes, they are now the developer that is working on Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines 2, which gives me great hope that it will live up to its predecessor. Even though that might be an impossible task, if anyone can pull it off, they can.
While we all wait for Bloodlines 2 to develop, The Chinese Room has been busy working on a new narrative horror title, Still Wakes the Deep. Everything about Still Wakes the Deep, which released for the PC through Steam and is also available for consoles, is high quality all around. There is even a really detailed story backed by fine voice acting and a creepy but great soundtrack. Plus, everything looks really amazing in a kind of overly industrial, inhuman sort of way.
The setting for Still Wakes the Deep is one of the best I have experienced in a horror title in a long time. You play an oil rig worker named Caz out on a platform in the stormy North Sea. The year is 1975, and it’s almost Christmas. Caz misses his family, but we also see in flashbacks that he and his wife were fighting prior to his deployment. Eventually we learn that Caz got into trouble with the police for fighting or something like that, and he took the job on the rig to escape while the heat dies down, since the rig is technically outside of Scotland, and I suppose outside of the jurisdiction of the local police. In any case, through both flashbacks and conversations with other workers, we learn that Caz is well-meaning and also well-liked by many of the other working-class folks on the rig (although not the boss). But even so, he’s a bit of a wash out when it comes to his life.
“Jesus loves you Caz,” one of the other characters says to him at one point. “But everyone else thinks that you are a…” and then adds a derogatory word. They both laugh at this statement, which says a lot about the man you are playing.
The Chinese Room brilliantly starts the game while everything on the rig is normal and has players take Caz around the environment doing things like going to get breakfast in the cafeteria or talking with the other workers. There are also a few flashbacks, but this first part of it is basically used to teach players how the different controls work, and also gives you the opportunity to learn about the Accommodations and Main Deck part of the environment, two places you will be visiting often as you play. Clever players with good spatial awareness will want to learn the maps here, at least in a general sense, and also the way that the rig is constructed in an industrial sort of way that seems almost overly complicated versus its functionality.
Eventually the horror begins, likely because the drill from the rig pierced something otherworldly at the bottom of the sea that quickly turns everything into a Lovecraft-like story filled with cosmic horror. Even then, the horror builds somewhat slowly. It’s a couple hours in, depending on how quickly you play, before you see your first proper monster, although evidence of them comes much more quickly than that. Caz first tries to find ways to escape the rig since its cut off from the rest of the world in the middle of the sea, during a storm no less. At some point the mission of escape becomes one of survival, for both Caz and as many people as he can help save. Those who don’t make it sometimes turn into monsters themselves, which adds to the horror when it happens to a character that you got to know a bit before the madness begins.
In terms of gameplay, Still Wakes the Deep does at times seem like a walking sim, not unlike some of The Chinese Room’s other titles. It also felt a bit like another recent narrative horror adventure, Fort Solis, where you have the illusion of choice, but basically have a pretty linear path that must be taken in order to reach each new goal or destination. Still Wakes the Deep does not look quite as good as Fort Solis (which was almost like a technology demonstration for Unreal Engine 5), but it does play a lot faster and has some environmental puzzles that shift the gameplay more towards an actual game and away from being another pure walking sim.
There are also elements in Still Wakes the Deep that are similar to the Amnesia series, where you need to hide from monsters as you slowly make your way through guarded areas to reach objectives. You can do that by watching the monster’s pattern and moving smartly, or by tossing something loud on the other side of the room and then moving away when the monster reacts. There are also some quick time events (QTEs) where you need to mash buttons or press certain keys to avoid falling or other hazards, but thankfully they are done sparingly here as few people really enjoy QTEs.
The voice acting in Still Wakes the Deep is some of the best I have ever heard, and apparently uses real Scottish actors to match the setting. I would highly recommend turning on subtitles, however, because they also tend to use a lot of Scottish sayings along with heavy accents, and the subtitles do a good job of translating both, so you know exactly what is going on.
There is a lot of direct horror in Still Wakes the Deep, although the gameplay is not particularly challenging for veteran gamers. Most of the distances you need to cover under the threat of a monster are pretty short, and it was easy to simply move while the lumbering creature was looking another way. Even so, there is an easy mode which can be activated that removes even more of that challenge. That is a nice feature to have for those who want to experience the story without too much accompanying danger.
I enjoyed Still Wakes the Deep for the six hours or so I was playing, and I was happy to see that The Chinese Room has again crafted a memorable narrative adventure. That more than anything else brings me a lot of hope that Bloodlines 2, even though it will hopefully be a vastly different title, will still have deep and immersive story content. As for Still Wakes the Deep, it’s a great example of narrative horror done right and is more than worth playing if you even slightly enjoy horror or narrative adventures.
Developers: The Chinese Room
Platforms: PC, PlayStation 5, Steam, Xbox Series X