| Layers of Fear | |
| Developer: | Bloober Team |
| Publisher: | Aspyr |
| Artist: | Mateusz Lenart |
| Composer: | Arkadiusz Reikowski |
| Engine: | Unity |
| Genre: | Adventure, Psychological horror |
| Modes: | Single-player |
Layers of Fear is a psychological horror adventure game developed by Bloober Team and published by Aspyr. It was released on Linux, Microsoft Windows, macOS, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One worldwide in February 2016.
In Layers of Fear, the player controls a psychologically disturbed painter who is trying to complete his magnum opus as he navigates a Victorian mansion revealing secrets about his past. The gameplay, presented in first-person perspective, is story-driven and revolves around puzzle-solving and exploration. Layers of Fear: Inheritance was released on 2 August 2016 as a direct follow up add-on to the first game. This time the player controls the painter's daughter with the downloadable content focusing on her apparent relapse into trauma after returning to her old house.
A definitive port for the Nintendo Switch, entitled Layers of Fear: Legacy, was released on 21 February 2018 and it features, in addition to the Inheritance DLC, Joy-Con, touchscreen, and HD Rumble support.[1] A limited physical retail release for the Nintendo Switch and PlayStation 4, published by Limited Run Games in North America, would be available starting October 2018.[2] A sequel titled Layers of Fear 2 was announced in October 2018 and was released on May 29, 2019.[3] A second sequel, also titled Layers of Fear, launched on June 15, 2023.[4] [5] [6]
The player takes control of an artist who has returned to his studio. His initial goal is to complete his masterpiece, and the player's role is to figure out how this task should be accomplished. The challenge comes from puzzles which require the player to search the environment for visual clues. The house appears straightforward at first, but it changes around the player as they explore it in first person. These changes in the environment provide scaffolding for the puzzles and provide regular jump scares common to games of this genre.
The game is divided into six chapters with various items for the player to find in order to complete his work. The game is heavily dimmed, and there are objects that uncover certain aspects of the painter's history. While completing the painting, there is a letter that is slowly pieced together, which shows the origin of his masterpiece, and objects which explain the secret of the painter through dialogue flashbacks.
Set sometime after World War I in the UK, the unnamed protagonist, also known as the Painter, returns home to begin painting his "magnum opus". To accomplish this, he explores a long and winding loop of corridors, which often defy spatial logic, to obtain key materials for use in his painting. During this process, details of his past are made clear to the player.
Once an ambitious young painter, the artist uses his pianist wife as a model and muse. She eventually gives birth to their daughter, and later on the Painter buys the family a Dobermann named Popiel. They live happily as a family for some time, but despite this serenity, some contention begins to grow among the Painter and his wife over time.
At some point, the Painter's wife gets severely injured in a department store fire, and is left unable to play the piano as she once could. Her physical appearance is also affected by the burns, which affects the Painter's efforts to use her as a model for his work. During this time, his mental health begins to deteriorate, and the quality of his paintings suffer as a result. As his reputation dwindles, his works are rejected from various galleries.
The Painter and his wife grow increasingly unhappy with each other. The wife believes her husband finds her disgusting, and she criticizes his work harshly. Due to her unhappiness, she lights his previous masterpiece which depicted herself, "The Lady in Black", on fire. Meanwhile, the Painter spends extended periods of time in his workshop, not coming out for days at a time. Feeling neglected, the wife eventually commits suicide by using a knife in the bathtub, to be later found by the Painter.
In the years following her death, the Painter's mental state decays further, and he loses custody of his daughter in the process.
In the present day, the Painter collects various materials for his newest painting, implied to be various body parts taken from his wife: her skin as the canvas, her blood as the paint, her bone as the undercoat, a brush made from her hair, her finger for the "final touches", and her eye to "bear witness".
Depending on player's actions in the game, three endings are possible.
The "Loop" ending reveals that the Painter's magnum opus is a portrait of his wife. He completes the painting at last, only to see it devolve into a mutilated version that taunts him. He takes the painting and discards it in a room filled with identical portraits, which begin to laugh at him. At this point, he returns to his workshop, ready to begin again.
In the "Art" ending, the Painter creates a self portrait of himself. Finally satisfied, he hangs it in the room upstairs. The next shot shows his painting on display among other famous works in a museum.
In the "Family" ending, his completed painting includes his daughter as well as his wife. The Painter realizes his mistakes and makes note of the fact that "it won't bring them back". He retreats to the room of his paintings and sets them on fire, along with his newest work, then lies down to burn with them.
The Inheritance downloadable content add-on tells the story of the painter's daughter coming back to her childhood home to face her past. Exploring the destroyed home with a flashlight, she relives her experiences and witnesses the full scope of the tragedy that has swallowed the family. During the course of these relived memories, there are different outcomes depending on the daughter's actions.
In the "Father" ending, the daughter discovers a portrait of her with a flower—her inheritance by her father. She views this portrait as an apology, and resolves to see her father as a tragic figure. She takes the portrait and burns the house down. The portrait is later shown hanging in the daughter's home. She criticizes her own child's artwork, while the portrait distorts, implying that the daughter is now beginning to experience the same obsession over perfection as her father had.
In the "Mother" ending, the daughter continues having flashbacks of her father yelling at her, even after discovering the portrait. The daughter the painting as an incomplete apology, and smashes it against a dresser. The action inadvertently knocks over a lit candelabra, resulting in a blaze that ultimately traps her in the burning house.
In the "True Inheritance" ending, the daughter is able to construct a larger portrait of her out of her old crayon drawings. She discovers a marked location in the house with covered canvas. She recalls being told that "insanity runs in my family", and decides to "let it run". This ending closes on the canvas being unveiled to show the same first layer the artist started with for his story, and the decrepit room appearing bright and intact as it had for the Painter.
Layers of Fear was heavily inspired by P.T., a teaser game for the cancelled video game Silent Hills.[7] The plot, in particular the ending with the blank canvas, closely parallels Anthony M. Rud's short story "A Square of Blank Canvas" from the April 1924 issue of Weird Tales. The game uses the Unity game engine.[8]
In 2016, Aspyr Media and Daydream released an Android port called Layers of Fear: Solitude.[9] An iOS version was released in 2019 but it was removed shortly afterward for reasons unknown.[10] [11]
Nick Monroe of The Escapist praised the game. "A magnum opus (...) A superb example of making story and atmosphere work together (...) Layers of Fear achieves its goal of making you scared as a player, instead of just existing as something scary".[12] Matt Ferguson from Syfy Games praised the storytelling calling it "Perfection" and saying the game was, "an evocatively thrilling horror game: it strikes a fantastic balance between narrative, gameplay, atmospheric immersion."[13] Patricia Hernandez of Kotaku said "Layers of Fear is one of the biggest horror surprises of the year."[14] Danielle Riendeau and Dave Tach of Polygon said "Layers of Fear is like P.T. on drugs."[15] Matt Thrower from GameSpot rated the game a 7/10 saying, "Stacked up like the rickety tiers of a Gothic building, Layers of Fear proves aptly named." Leon Hurley praised the game in a GamesRadar review, stating "it's one of the best horror games I've ever played and literally creates a new tool set for interactive scares." He complimented the game's art and the "unease from a horror experience" it provides, giving it a maximum score.
Choi Rad of IGN found the subject of the game interesting but declared the game "not scary", "lacking tension", and that "every time he started to enjoy the flow, it was broken by small puzzle challenges that just aren't fun to solve." Joe Juba of Game Informer echoed Rad's statements critiquing the game's telegraphed scares, noting that it felt like a haunted house at a carnival rather than P.T., declaring that "After a scary moment, it doesn't allow players enough breathing room, because the next one is always immediately around the corner. Every time you enter a room or a hallway, something happens."
In October 2018, developer Bloober Team announced a sequel to Layers of Fear, titled Layers of Fear 2, previously code-named Project Méliès. Layers of Fear 2 was published by Gun Media on May 28, 2019.[16] In September 2021, Bloober Team revealed a trailer for a third Layers of Fear project. The game was originally set for release in 2022, but was delayed to 2023.[17] [18] [19] [20]