Still Wakes The Deep is the best original horror game of 2024
Still Wakes in the deep
Prior to A Machine for Pigs, The Chinese rooms had a few projects, most important of those ,in my opinion, was Dear Esther. Following A Machine for pigs Not satisfied with releasing two bangers back to back they decided they would once again give us another fantastic narrative horror game. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Now this was the first game from The Chinese room i played, and i absolutely loved it. This was actually my introduction into the “walking simulator” genre. Prior to this I’d never played a game like this and it blew me away. This was the beginning of my ceaseless dive into this fantastic genre.
So a few years pass and There i am some random day in july just casually doom scrolling on tiktok and I come across some footage for a game that was nearing the end of development. I was completely enamored by this game I’d just learned about. A narrative horror game on an oil rig? Uh yeah. After some time as it does, the tiktok algo stopped feeding me Still Wakes The Deep content, and like the bird brain i am, completely forgot about it. Then a month before release I see a friend tweet out that she was excited about the game and I was like hey why does that sound familiar, and BOOM it’s back just like that and I am on this hype train full steam ahead. I was however adamant in trying to avoid learning anything about the game. This was something I wanted to go into blind.
And i did, I am i forever grateful i managed to avoid all spoilers because this game is absolutely fantastic. Upon playing the first thing I noticed was how much it was like The Thing and in many ways Like Dead Space.. I am so excited to talk to you about this game.
Before we start would you kindly leave a comment. Tell me about a game you are excited for this year. My big releases this year are Frostpunk2 and Silent hill2
Anyway, I pushed aside many games to skip ahead to this game, and for very good reason.
Welcome to My review of Still Wakes in the Deep.
Immersion
As goes with walking simulators, This shit is next level immersion. I mean The Chinese Rooms whole pedigree is highly immersive games. It’s what they are good at. And in my opinion they perfected it with this game. Lets start with the sound design because gawd damn dude.
So the game starts on some beautiful voice acting. It opens on the main characters wife speaking a letter she wrote to him, and right from the jump you can just tell that everyword that comes out of every mouth is going to be so beautiful recorded and emoted. And it really is, Even the protag, Caz, is just done so well. There is a lot of dialogue in this game. Whether, It’ just caz talking to himself or one conversations between crewmates everything really feels so full.
The Background audio as well as the general foley work was just stupendous. The waves crashing beneath the deck sound massive. The sound of caz’s heavy boots pressing heavily against the deck of the rig, the sounds of chains swinging in the winds, hell the winds blowing through open walls and windows. It’s all just incredible. These guys deserve a damn raise.
The writing of the characters is so beautifully made. Something in media that i enjoy deeply is when characters are just having conversation regarding things that the player will never witness or be a part of. Showing us that who we are playing as might be our focus, but they are not the only person in this world living a life. It’s just something that i really enjoy.
I’m not gonna get into details here, but the story is beautiful. It’s some real step up and be a man type shit. And so much about the story is just left to interpretation. Which is beautiful. Letting the players make up their own mind about whats going on without guiding us to one conclusion or another is just ugggghhhh I love that shit. On top of it’s monsters, This is where Still Wakes The Deep most resembles The Thing. The story writing is just, man it’s good. It feels good not knowing every little minute detail about an antagonist or a monster. Knowing the origins of something and every moment of their or it’s life does not make it a better story.
Ok lets talk about the visuals. So fidelity wise. It’s fine. Which is not something that bothers me at all. But the actual visual design of the worl d, it’s in habitants and it’s creatures oh my god dude. Everything is beautiful. The oil rig we are working on looks like a well used oil rig. And as a child of a rig worker, I can say everything looked exactly as i had envisioned as a child. Everything felt precarious and teetering on a dangerous precipice. Oil rigs are not safe places, and even before the incident, it felt as though something awful could happen at any minute. The hallways were long and cramped and littered with junk. Whether it be papers or overflow from some storage closet , spare machine parts or trash , the rig, the halls felt lived in. We even get a beautiful look at the actual decks on the rig and we can see the regular hustle and bustle of the rig workers just getting by.
Everything about the design of the rig is just so damn good. I was pretty stoked to see how well everything was put together in the early moments of the game,
Ok so the monsters and the lifeform. I do not know what the creatures and life forms are. But dear god is the design of these things horrifying and beautiful. When the life form isn’t an amalgamation of flesh and bone, it reminds me of the 2019 film The color out of space and even the 2018 film Annihilation.The lifeform is beautiful. It’s flesh if it can even be called that is comprised of glowing pinks and purples and deep deep reds. It is a sight to behold. At a glance however the flesh seems dense, when we see it it looks more like it could be like a very hard rubber or even a flexible kind of steel. Sometimes it can be seen pumping stuff through it’s tendrils tho I am no clear on what or why.
And then there are the creatures and biomass it collects from the crew. I am not going to assume for a second how this thing works. But after you see the lifeforms main body, the pink and purple glowing tendrils, you begin to start seeing human flesh, blood and bones melted together in gruesome and horrifying fashion. But it seems off, We can see it’s human but, It’s wrong. The first flesh mound I encountered I immediately noticed the proportions were WAY off. And had me confused. What exactly does this life form want, what is it doing to the crew, and why is it doing these things, not on a moral level mind you, but a biological level. These odd characteristics can be seen time and time again in the mounds, the proportions are just off. Everything is just bigger. As if after consuming the flesh it is trying to recreate the flesh but it just wants to make it bigger and bigger. And bigger it does get.
So the monsters are just oh jeez they are fantastic. They are fleshy sacs of human remains, that either still contain the consciousness of the human they were or my guess, when the lifeform recreates them,it tries to create the person but can only create a facsimile. However the physical person appears more parody than facsimile. With oversized appendages and a fleshy sack for a body. Often employing the use of tentacles which also seem to come off of the lifeform itself at times.
Much like the flesh mounds, the creatures, which are all crew mates, seem to retain much of their physical self, but all of their features are just off. And this is seen most prominent in the case of the Rennick creature. His head and face have been greatly enlarged and exaggerated where more of the creature is just his head. The design of each and every creature is grotesque and horrifying.
This game is simply and purely unadulterated art in the form of violence.
Gameplay and story
As far as gameplay goes. This is a walking simulator pure and simple. Now if you aren’t familiar with such a thing. It’s basically just a game with no combat mechanics , generally set in first person with some puzzles with a narrative focus.
And that is exactly what this is.
So then the story.
You play as Cameron “Caz” Mcleary,an electrician who is just finishing his stint on the oil rig Beira D. Caz fled to work on the oil rig in an attempt to avoid police persecution back in his home town for the vicious beating of someone who insulted his wife. Despite having no experience on an oil rig, caz’s best friend, Roy helps get him the job so caz can avoid prison time. Despite his wifes repeated protests, caz leaves. And despite how far he fled, the police still manage to follow him back to the rig. So on his last day, his boss rennick fires him for bringing the police around.
As caz is leaving to board the helicopter the rig hits something and caz falls off the rig. He;s rescued by some of the crew but immediately notices the rig is falling apart and something weird is coming off of the derrick itself and it is not helping the situation at all.
It’s not long after this that caz and all the remaining crew realize that not only is the rig falling apart but it is doomed. They spend their last moments trying to keep the rig from imploding before they get off. During this many of the crew have been consumed by the lifeform that came from the derrick and transformed into whatever the hell they are transformed into. This adds to the desperation and futility of the crews situation.
Eventually rennick is able to get the heli set up for evacuation but attempts to flee before anyone can even get on. Heroically the helicopter crashes.
At some point Caz has to rescue roy and bring him his insulin but by time he gets to him, he is tragically dead to diabetic ketoacidosis . After this the remaining crew realize that they need to stop this lifeform by any and all means. It can not find it’s way to civilization. After getting pinned, finlay manages to convince caz to do the right thing and blow the whole rig killing them and the life form. And in a show of growth and heroism, caz destroys the rig killing him and anyone or anything left to hell.
While the story isn’t really much more than cowardly man learns to put others first and sarifices himself for the greater good. It is displayed in a very emotional way. Caz just didn’t want to go to prison, by the end of his stint he was begging to be with his family and in the end he had to die to grant them safety. Tho it is not explicitly stated if what they did even worked. I doubt it, when a clean up crew comes around to well clean up, they will inevitably run into the lifeform and it will find it’s way to shore. So much like The Thing, humanity is doomed no matter what,
Horror
The sheer horror of Still Wakes the Deep is palpable. The game covers several themes all of which are beat over the players head like a horror cudgel.
Lets start with the more obvious. Cosmic Horror. The crew stumble upon what can only be assumed was an ancient life form. Whether it is native to earth or a long dormant alien is never explained. All we know is it is awake and seemingly wants to spread. The life form begins transforming both the rig and it’s crew. However the purpose of this transformation is completely unknown. That is something i really appreciated about this. The writers just left this blank. What does it want, what is it doing? Any question you could possibly ask about this life form. All the while the lifeform is making everyone around it go insane. Proximity to it seems to work similarly to the marker in regards to the the mind. The crew who transform are simple angry, violent, and often confused and scared. Most of the humans negative emotions were greatly amplified to the dismay of those who have not transformed.
The Body Horror was what really had me going the most. The team at Chinese Room knocked the designs of the transformed crew so beautifully. That shit is art. It’s like a cross between Rob Botin and David Cronenberg. I don’t even know what to call some of this stuff. But seeing what this lifeform does to the human body is just horrifying
Then there is the horror of losing a loved one. Now this one is not as explicit as the others, but is a constant theme throughout the game. Caz left hom eto work on the rig to escape the police who were after him for beating the shit out of a dude who insulted his wife, which is very based. We open the game on his last day on the rig where he is relishing the idea of returning home to his wife and kids. But all hell breaks loose. Through the entire game Caz laments not being with his family. And the further a long the night gets the more emotional he becomes in regards to it. Especially when he realizes he is never going back home. As a family man myself, this really hit me.
Then there are a bunch of for me more minor horrors. This game will certainly assist you in forming some light thalassophobia, claustrophobia , acrophobia, agoraphobia, aquaphobia, nyctophobia, sprinkle in a little typophobia, hemophobia, and doraphobia.
This game offers a lot for everyone. If you are afraid of something, this game is going to try to touch on it. I truly appreciate how scary and horrifying this game is. And this gives me great hope for the future of The Chinese room and the games they might make in the future
Conclusion
I like horror games. I mean yeah. So I do not say this lightly but this is going to be the best horror game of 2024 for me.
I played Still Wakes the Deep via Gamepass, which i will be buying this now wherever possible. It is a phenomenal walking simulator. I think they really tried to do something new with the genre and In my opinion this feels fresh. It’s not just another PT clone. It is a true evolution of What they had done with Everybody’s Gone To The Rapture , Dear Esther ,and a Machine For Pigs. It was really nice to play a Narrative horror game and not immediately be reminded that PT exists. I mean obviously there is influence. It is impossible to avoid it’s influence at this point. But The Chinese room did something different with it and I thought they knocked it out of the park
So Should you buy this? Yeah yeah yeah yeah. If you love horror games and movies this is a must play.
It is the best walking sim horror game to come out in a long time and a much needed breath of fresh air to the genre. A breath of fresh air that i really didn’t know it needed.
Still Wakes the Deep, Best horror Game 2024
Anway Thanks for watching