Still Wakes the Deep

A horror walking sim with excellent voice acting and meticulous texture design. It takes place in an oil rig that looks and feels authentic, down to its rusty bolts and creaking bowels.

If you've never played games like this before, make sure to calibrate your expectations. They are linear and only minimally interactive. Almost everything you do is just move through the areas and story. There is a little bit of exploration, a handful of simple environmental puzzles, and a few stealth/chase sequences, and that's it. The focus is on immersion in the story and its world.

It's hard not to compare this game to Dear Esther. The story elements and even setting are similar. Where they differ is in mood and pacing, as that game was calm and slow, while Still Wakes the Deep takes place in a tense and claustrophobic environment. You'll be ill at ease from its beginning to its end.

While the atmosphere is very well done, the narrative structure could have been better. Around the middle of the game it felt like I was going in circles, both in the physical environment and in the narrative. The corridors all started looking the same and the tasks ahead of me blended together. So, I'm supposed to go a specific location on the rig. But haven't I done this before? Twice? I think that perhaps the game design erred on being too focused, at the cost of an oppressive sameness to everything. It's quite short, though, so these faults are manageable.

All in all it's not the best game in this genre, but it does a marvelous job at creating a sense of place. The oil rig is the star, center, and draw. The other ingredients are less impressive, but if the idea of traversing one of these north sea behemoths of metal and loneliness sounds exciting to you, and you're good with horror, then it is worth spending a few hours with Still Wakes the Deep.