Still Wakes the Deep

Still Wakes the Deep's nearly on-rails structure and ineffective scares undersell its otherwise fantastic setting.

The Chinese Room returns to the horror genre with an original tale featuring a memorable monster.

While Still Wakes the Deep is a beautiful work of atmosphere and tension, all that can be shattered by its strictly linear trappings.

An emotive story that is equal parts terrifying and traumatic.

Indeed, I started Still Wakes the Deep hating Caz, but by the end of the game, he had won me over. The finale was a complete gut punch, and for the first time in a while, I sobbed over the conclusion of a story. It’s not necessarily a bummer ending — I’ll spare you the details — but it is an emotional one. Each individual element of Still Wakes the Deep has been done before, but they’re brought together marvelously here, and the end result is a horror classic.

This is a great, if short, horror game with impeccable looks and fantastic atmosphere. It's scary and full of character, but with a barely five-hour run time your enjoyment could depend on what you paid for it.

Still Wakes the Deep is a relatively short game (I completed the campaign in under five hours). The story is strictly linear, akin to some of The Chinese Room’s other games, with no collectibles or secrets. While it’s true that the game builds on the setting, atmosphere, tension, and body horror, it flubs the most crucial aspect: the moments when you actually face the creatures. It’s like if The Thing was “from another world,” but it’s revealed to be E.T. due to how harmless it is. In the end, this romp through an infested oil rig might look slick, but it spills over and slips when it matters most.

A first-person North Sea horror that doesn't push the boat out but still excels within its genre

In the end, Still Wakes the Deep is worth the six or seven hours it takes to blast through the story. It’s not scary as such, but it’s tense as hell, and there’s a poignance here that shines brightly through the veneer of soot, and gloop, and toxic masculinity What this game is really about, just like that bronze monument in Eyemouth, is the widows and bairns left behind.

Still Wakes the Deep isn’t the most riveting interactive journey. The monsters are easy to hide from (though plenty scary), and the puzzles and platforming quickly come to feel tired. But Still Wakes does deal with compelling emotional material that rewards you for your time spent with it. It’s the kind of game I’d like to play again and see what new things I get out of it. But it’s also a testament to why I like this genre, the poorly-named “walking simulator,” so much. When I’m not focused on the reactive challenges of a more fast-paced game that demands constant input response, I’m instead offered the challenge of navigating the puzzles of my own thoughts. You know, where the real horror and dread lies.