Layers of Fear Review

Before Bloober Team heads to Silent Hill, it returns to its Layers of Fear series to right some wrongs and try out some new ideas. Is this reimagining/sequel the pinnacle of the Polish studio’s work or simply a farewell? Find out in GameWatcher’s Layers of Fear review.

It may seem a tad brazen to both remake and reboot your most famous franchise just seven years and two and a bit games in, but that’s exactly what Bloober Team has done with Layers of Fear. It’s also made it a sequel as well. Most of all, it feels like the closing of a personal chapter for the Polish studio. Layers of Fear 2023 takes the original game, its DLC, and Layers of Fear 2 and tweaks aspects of them. Then throws in a new story that ties the events together into a cohesive structure. So yes, somehow Layers of Fear is a sequel, a remake, a reimagining, and a reboot/retcon.

That’s a strange mishmash of things for the new Layers of Fear to be, and yes, it’s a bit at odds with itself because of that, but it’s an interesting game to come into with all the foreknowledge of why this is happening. It’s supposed to be the new marker for a studio that came from making a disastrous Bomberman horror knockoff to becoming a horror powerhouse that has dipped toes into the world of Blair Witch and had the late Rutger Hauer appear in one of its games.

The artist's story takes up the majority of the game.

It’s fair to say this Layers of Fear is coming full circle whilst trying to show where the studio could yet head. Its past is muddied by a critical rollercoaster of reactions to its titles. Some criticisms are justified (The Medium and Blair Witch sharing the majority of them), but it’s been a near decade-long run of experimentation and growth that’s naturally had fumbles and misses along the way.

In this Layers of Fear, one of the newest parts is the wraparound story that ties the other games together. In 1955, a writer is invited to a retreat at an isolated lighthouse and must write about the story of a troubled painter (the protagonist of the original Layers of Fear). What begins as a meta layer to the series begins to blur as a real-life connection between the events of Layers of Fear, Layers of Fear 2, and the lighthouse begins to emerge.

The lighthouse is essentially a hub for entering the other stories, but it is returned to periodically when the story needs updating. The typewriter allows the writer to return to the stories of the painter and the actor, but the side stories are reached through books on a nearby desk.

Returning to the mansion of the original Layers of Fear takes up the majority of the 2023 game’s playthrough, with three different visits included. Bloober Team has created the game in Unreal Engine 5, and it’s fair to say it shows. Layers of Fear is inarguably the most visually impressive game Bloober Team yet. It’s not without technical hiccups here and there, but the visual manipulation it deals in helps mask some of that. The mansion is familiar yet clearly more defined. In terms of style, I found it looked best in the new side story focused on the artist’s wife. The thematic use of chains throughout her prison version of the mansion provides a visual feast that shows up the main story chunk’s presentation.

There's a lot more running away this time.

While there are a few set-piece changes to the story of Layers of Fear, the biggest overhaul comes in the form of a lantern and its use. Not featured in the original version, the lantern not only lights a darker mansion than before, but can be used to expunge obstacles, find items, and crucially, stop the angry spirit that periodically pursues you. In the original version, the spirit appears very briefly,now it shows up on the regular, slowly stalking you. The lantern can be focused on it for a short time to ‘dissolve’ it. But it soon returns to its ambling pursuit. I must say I enjoyed this addition to the game. It adds a bit of a threat without overdoing it the way Layers of Fear 2 did.

The actor section (aka Layers of Fear 2) is probably the weaker part of the package. Even with the new connections to the other parts and tweaks to how it’s played, it has an inconsistency that hurts it. It also overstays its welcome somewhat, and if anything it could have been cut and shaped into a briefer part of the experience.

What does help is the connective tissue between stories. It may be a bit of an odd duck when compared to the larger portion focused on the artist and his family, but the 1955 wraparound drags it into relevancy. As an actual contained package makes these individual ones it’s not the most cohesive way of telling it, and at times it feels like the lighthouse sections are out of sync with what you have learned up to that point. For the most part it works though.

The new addition to the first game's story is a highlight.

So Layers of Fear isn’t quite the definitive sendoff for the series, but it does succeed as a remake/reimagining of it. On a technical level, it does show the progress Bloober Team has made in the last seven years, and there’s promise for the future.