The viral success of Hideo Kojima’s 2014 game PT — like any innovation, or new breaking of the ground in the confines of a genre — brought forward a slew of imitators who… didn’t quite understand what made the original work as well as it did. On one hand, a part of the attraction of PT is its novelty: a lot of the things it did, such as the looping hallway (and how things change between each rendition of the loop), were genuinely revolutionary for the time. And while you’re fully allowed to wear your influences on your sleeves, if you just deploy elements of it without much of a critical eye as to how to make it yours, not only do you doom your thing to being derivative, but it also prompts diminishing returns: familiarity breeding contempt, a joke becoming less and less funny the more times its repeated, etc etc. Another part of the core appeal to PT — and one I feel really can’t be emulated — is its mystique, and its sort of status as a lost media: PT in itself was never meant to be a standalone experience, it was a taste test for a something more that never came to be, deleted off the Playstation store to the point where the only way one can actually experience PT is through YouTube playthroughs. To create a ‘full version’ of PT, or to create your own version of it feels oxymoronic: because a lot of the actual appeal in it is how it’s ultimately an incomplete experience, and by trying to fill in the gaps, all you’re really doing is making your emulation of it incomplete, just in a much different, less evocative way.
Of course, that’s not the only reason PT is as effective as it is. Another core part of how it works is pacing, and overall length: PT hits the ground running and does everything it wants to do in ~20 minutes. None of that time is wasted, there’s never really a moment where the player’s not doing anything of note, you’re on for a ride, from beginning to end, and… the game never repeats itself. There’s a veritable bag of cool tricks that the game’s willing to show to its player, but any of those given tricks is only shown once before the game then moves on to something else. A non-zero amount of these clones up the runtime, which in addition to often introducing issues with the pacing (by, say, adding loops where nothing happens, or by doing the same particular scare again, and again, and again,), can often lead the game to wear out whatever welcome it had. Layers of Fear, the debut (not counting DS ports of other games) effort from Polish studio Bloober Team… quite freely professes to be inspired by PT, and attempts to take what it did and try to create a ‘full experience’ out of it. To its credit, despite the three-hour runtime, it doesn’t wear out its welcome. If, mainly, because it never quite gives much of a welcome in the first place.
You play as a once-famous painter (with his life in ruins after initially unspecified events) dedicated to creating his masterpiece. However, to make his masterpiece he has to collect inspiration for it first, and so must explore your house, navigating the constantly changing corridors, uncovering the layers of who this painter really is, all in service to create a painting befitting of your talent. I’ll give this game credit: the story itself functions, for the most part. It’s not revolutionary, but it presents a nice little mystery that digs into the little details and… genuinely did not do what I expected it to do, and that compliment is only half-backhanded. The lack of initial context given beyond ‘you were a famous painter but also damn, bitch, you live like this?’ does a good job at… painting a picture, but not a complete one, and with each progression in the plot a little more gets filled in until eventually you get a full grasp on who you are, what’s going on, and why you’re doing what you’re doing. I’m also a fan of the visual design of the house — it nails the old-timey decrepit mansion aesthetic perfectly, and I like the way the game represents the whole ‘the hallways move’ thing. There are landmarks, and specific rooms you return to, but there’s no frame of reference to where anything is, and it really captures the feeling of, like, stumbling around, drunk, knowing that you should know where you are despite feeling hopelessly lost… then making it to a place you recognize and finally feeling it all click together.
It’s a shame, for as much as walking through the mansion feels decently atmospheric… the actual act of playing the game falls far, far more flat. The game is effectively a ‘walking simulator’ — a game where the focus is on the narrative, and where player interactivity is rather limited — but it feels more like one of those Newgrounds flash games where you click around a room aimlessly until eventually you trigger a jumpscare and you get to move on. The entire game experience is walking down corridors and then walking around in place until the game opens up another corridor for you to go down, and it never feels like you’re uncovering anything, working towards a specific goal, or anything that provides more motivation for the player to actively want to move forward. There’s the occasional puzzle — sometimes a key you have to find, or a code you have to enter — and, to this game’s cr- oh literally the answer is just displayed on that wall over there, so much for having to maybe actually work for my progress. Whatever blocks your progress is very minimal. And whatever happens while you’re progressing is very minimal. Theoretically — given that the story fragments are mostly just crumbs gated behind said progression — this would allow for the horror of this game to take the front stage, but…
…I’m sorry, but this game isn’t really scary at all. I know that that’s subjective — I’m sure, at the time of release, there were so many YouTubers proclaiming this to be the SCARIEST GAME EVER?????? — but the effort made here to try and scare the player feels so lacking. Jumpscares just happen. There’s no buildup, there’s nothing really… disturbing it tries to evoke, you’re just trying to look around a room or walk down a hallway when something an object moves and there’s a music cue and there’s really no reaction I ever had to them other than “uh, okay, moving on.” The game is fond of using the same tricks over and over again — doors opening only to reveal brick walls behind them, the player falling through the floor — which, even beyond how each reuse provides diminishing returns, just kind of proves to show how few tricks the game has in the first place, and how ineffective they feel. I’m not one to use ‘it’s not scary’ as a criticism — what’s ‘scary’ is subjective, and on my end I mostly respond more to things that are stressful than scary — but here, that’s what it comes down to. A lot of the game hinges on it being scary: it’s what the atmosphere of the house is building up to, it’s the connective tissue between the story crumbs, but it falls so flat. The scares are limp, cookie-cutter, and even if they weren’t taken from other games that… did what this was trying to do way more effectively and concisely, they don’t work on their own merit. They’re too low-effort in application, and whatever could have maybe been effective is diluted and washed out by poor execution and copious repetition.
In essence… well, the essence is “we wanted to do our own PT!” which… in itself set the game up for failure from the word go, but even besides that… this wasn’t particularly potent. There’s potential in the story, and I quite enjoyed the environmental design, but from the simplistic and aimless nature of the gameplay and the game’s utter incapability to provide a single effective scare… the layers only go skin deep. What you see is what you get. And what I saw… sure did not impress me. 3/10.
Of course, that’s not the only reason PT is as effective as it is. Another core part of how it works is pacing, and overall length: PT hits the ground running and does everything it wants to do in ~20 minutes. None of that time is wasted, there’s never really a moment where the player’s not doing anything of note, you’re on for a ride, from beginning to end, and… the game never repeats itself. There’s a veritable bag of cool tricks that the game’s willing to show to its player, but any of those given tricks is only shown once before the game then moves on to something else. A non-zero amount of these clones up the runtime, which in addition to often introducing issues with the pacing (by, say, adding loops where nothing happens, or by doing the same particular scare again, and again, and again,), can often lead the game to wear out whatever welcome it had. Layers of Fear, the debut (not counting DS ports of other games) effort from Polish studio Bloober Team… quite freely professes to be inspired by PT, and attempts to take what it did and try to create a ‘full experience’ out of it. To its credit, despite the three-hour runtime, it doesn’t wear out its welcome. If, mainly, because it never quite gives much of a welcome in the first place.
You play as a once-famous painter (with his life in ruins after initially unspecified events) dedicated to creating his masterpiece. However, to make his masterpiece he has to collect inspiration for it first, and so must explore your house, navigating the constantly changing corridors, uncovering the layers of who this painter really is, all in service to create a painting befitting of your talent. I’ll give this game credit: the story itself functions, for the most part. It’s not revolutionary, but it presents a nice little mystery that digs into the little details and… genuinely did not do what I expected it to do, and that compliment is only half-backhanded. The lack of initial context given beyond ‘you were a famous painter but also damn, bitch, you live like this?’ does a good job at… painting a picture, but not a complete one, and with each progression in the plot a little more gets filled in until eventually you get a full grasp on who you are, what’s going on, and why you’re doing what you’re doing. I’m also a fan of the visual design of the house — it nails the old-timey decrepit mansion aesthetic perfectly, and I like the way the game represents the whole ‘the hallways move’ thing. There are landmarks, and specific rooms you return to, but there’s no frame of reference to where anything is, and it really captures the feeling of, like, stumbling around, drunk, knowing that you should know where you are despite feeling hopelessly lost… then making it to a place you recognize and finally feeling it all click together.
It’s a shame, for as much as walking through the mansion feels decently atmospheric… the actual act of playing the game falls far, far more flat. The game is effectively a ‘walking simulator’ — a game where the focus is on the narrative, and where player interactivity is rather limited — but it feels more like one of those Newgrounds flash games where you click around a room aimlessly until eventually you trigger a jumpscare and you get to move on. The entire game experience is walking down corridors and then walking around in place until the game opens up another corridor for you to go down, and it never feels like you’re uncovering anything, working towards a specific goal, or anything that provides more motivation for the player to actively want to move forward. There’s the occasional puzzle — sometimes a key you have to find, or a code you have to enter — and, to this game’s cr- oh literally the answer is just displayed on that wall over there, so much for having to maybe actually work for my progress. Whatever blocks your progress is very minimal. And whatever happens while you’re progressing is very minimal. Theoretically — given that the story fragments are mostly just crumbs gated behind said progression — this would allow for the horror of this game to take the front stage, but…
…I’m sorry, but this game isn’t really scary at all. I know that that’s subjective — I’m sure, at the time of release, there were so many YouTubers proclaiming this to be the SCARIEST GAME EVER?????? — but the effort made here to try and scare the player feels so lacking. Jumpscares just happen. There’s no buildup, there’s nothing really… disturbing it tries to evoke, you’re just trying to look around a room or walk down a hallway when something an object moves and there’s a music cue and there’s really no reaction I ever had to them other than “uh, okay, moving on.” The game is fond of using the same tricks over and over again — doors opening only to reveal brick walls behind them, the player falling through the floor — which, even beyond how each reuse provides diminishing returns, just kind of proves to show how few tricks the game has in the first place, and how ineffective they feel. I’m not one to use ‘it’s not scary’ as a criticism — what’s ‘scary’ is subjective, and on my end I mostly respond more to things that are stressful than scary — but here, that’s what it comes down to. A lot of the game hinges on it being scary: it’s what the atmosphere of the house is building up to, it’s the connective tissue between the story crumbs, but it falls so flat. The scares are limp, cookie-cutter, and even if they weren’t taken from other games that… did what this was trying to do way more effectively and concisely, they don’t work on their own merit. They’re too low-effort in application, and whatever could have maybe been effective is diluted and washed out by poor execution and copious repetition.
In essence… well, the essence is “we wanted to do our own PT!” which… in itself set the game up for failure from the word go, but even besides that… this wasn’t particularly potent. There’s potential in the story, and I quite enjoyed the environmental design, but from the simplistic and aimless nature of the gameplay and the game’s utter incapability to provide a single effective scare… the layers only go skin deep. What you see is what you get. And what I saw… sure did not impress me. 3/10.