LAYERS OF FEAR Review for Xbox One

Layers of Fear by developer Bloober Team and publisher Aspyr Media is a horror game. In it, you explore the mind of a painter who has gone insane.

At the game’s beginning, you are given a message: “A portrait reveals more about the painter than the subject.” This holds true for the entire game. At the game’s offset, you know nothing about the painter aside from the fact he has returned to his home to work on his masterpiece. After reaching the room where the painting is stored, the painter begins to have hallucinations which form the majority of the levels in the game. As you progress, you can find items that, when picked up, cause a memory to play. As you progress through the game—and by extension, the painter’s psyche—you learn more and more about the painter and his family, as well as what has befallen them. A word of warning, this IS a horror game, so don’t go in expecting to hear a happy tale.

While the Layers of Fear’s other opening message “just like in life, the doors we choose determine our fate” might seem to imply, there are multiple endings, an internet search revealed that there are only 3 endings to the game—and of those 3, 2 are only triggered by VERY specific conditions (you will most likely need to know this before-hand if you want to get a different ending).

There are puzzles in the game, but the required ones are usually straightforward. If you get stuck, look around for something out of place—usually a set of numbers in a spot where they don’t belong. Whenever I got stuck, I would turn up the brightness settings and look around the room for anything out of place.

If I were to complain about anything in this game, it would be the lighting. While the game suggests having the brightness settings low, I can’t count how many times I got stuck on a puzzle simply because the room wasn’t illuminated well enough on the suggested settings. While the lighting does justice to the atmosphere of this game, it sometimes made puzzles harder than they needed to be. For example, there was one point in the game where I came across a locked door. After blindly searching around the room for a key or trigger, I turned up the brightness settings. That’s when I noticed a deadbolt on the door that could be interacted with, in a spot that wouldn’t be visible under the normal lighting.

Aside from the lighting issue, I enjoyed playing Layers of Fear. I think a fair rating for it would be 7/10.

Check Out the Layers of Fear Trailer:

Layers of Fear is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and Windows PC.