It’s odd. I know, from talking to Dan Pinchbeck, the founder and creative director of The Chinese Room, over 10 years ago, that they never wanted to stick to the story exploration games (or walking simulators as people often dismissively call them). Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, which I still like a lot, was supposed to be more systems driven, before cutting down on features in favor of story on recommendation from Frictional Games. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture was envisioned as a simulation game where you live out the last moments before the world ends, not a game where you see echoes of these events. And while I didn’t find their first title after being purchased by Sumo Digital, that is Little Orpheus, interesting and never finished it, it was trying to be a cinematic/puzzle platformer, not a game driven by narration. Maybe with the Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2 they would finally be able to deliver a title that’s great not just narratively, but also in terms of gameplay. Because Still Wakes the Deep isn’t doing it. It isn’t doing much at all, sadly.
Still Wakes the Deep is a story driven horror themed stealth adventure game. Yep, just like first two Amnesia titles, SOMA and countless others by this point. You have a few more traversal options than these games usually have, being closest to Outlast, but the overall gameplay loop is nothing you’ve not seen before. Some segments are more about puzzles, some are chases, some are stealthy bits, some are about storytelling and some mix one or a couple of these elements together. It’s also ridiculously linear, to the point where even seemingly fluff interactions that shouldn’t affect anything might block your progress at times and you never really have to make a real decision or influence the narration in any way.
In a typical The Chinese Room fashion, narrative itself is wonderfully written. This time going for something that sounds simple and down to earth, avoiding most of the usual theatric and poetic flair writing in their games usually has (which I love, but some people seem to not care much about). It’s the 1970s, an oil rig in the middle of the sea and most of the characters are Scottish working class people, speaking as normal people in a stressful situation and having their own simple troubles before the horrible events begin. The way the horror aspect works here is also well done, providing a “slice of nightmare” experience that doesn’t attempt to go into the science of what is going on. It’s just that suddenly Something is unleashed that turns people into horrifying blobs of living and killing flesh and characters have to deal with that.
Issue with all of this is – the game doesn’t do anything genuinely interesting at any point, but also nothing that’s so good you can call the experience pleasant or fun. It’s like the low budget horror or sci-fi movie from the 80s made by a talented crew – a mishmash of ideas often already explored better in bigger budget movies. But sometimes the result is outrageous or intriguing enough to be cool in its own right. And sometimes it’s just “serviceable”. Still Wakes the Deep is the latter for the most part. And when it’s not, it’s frustrating. Its desire to spice interactions up with button pressing or holding seems to be inspired by the Metro series or Alien: Isolation, but the end result makes the game feel like it’s just constant QTEs instead. I’m not sure why they didn’t go for full interactivity a la Frictional Games controls instead, because the end result genuinely reminded me of the late 2000s, when games put pointless QTE-like interactions into everything.
So… it’s just not particularly interesting, honestly. While playing, I was constantly thinking of SOMA and Cryostasis – games that had a lot of similar ideas, but had more going on with them. Both of those, while also far from flawless, were engaging and had things you’d really latch onto apart from just good narrative. Still Wakes the Deep doesn’t have that. It looks alright, the soundtrack is fitting, the monster designs are quite grotesque in a good way. But I didn’t feel like it was enough to be worth playing through the game, which also had those frustrating QTE-like interactions and several spots where they could glitch out in a really dumb way. If you’re in a mood for this type of game, it’s very far from the worst option you have, so you might as well grab it on a discount. But don’t expect much of the game.