It is a long weekend in NSW. That means it is time to try and convince Caitlin to watch me play games under some pretence of a shared experience. Unfortunately, she can’t stand Persona V and I suspect would grow bored rapidly with Pacific Drive, my other current games. As a result, I have no choice but to purchase something new, story-based and short. Still Wakes the Deep was that something.
The game is a tight 5 hours set on an oil rig in the North Sea off Scotland. The rig drills into an unknowable Lovecraftian entity and succumbs to horrors beyond horrors. And I’m not talking about the Scottish cuisine you see in the intro.
Still Wakes the Deep fits the category of games colloquially known as Walking Simulators. The focus of these “games” is not the gameplay, but more of a semi-linear interactive story. You struggle to die, it’s impossible to get lost, puzzles are pretty simple and there are a lot of set-pieces. They can be interesting from a visual perspective, but are actually not that fun to play. The unique sense of reward and accomplishment that games provide and is so intrinsic to the medium is not present at all.
As a counter-example. Last of Us has a very narrative heavy approach (it is a very tightly choreographed experience), but also has complex gameplay, rewarding exploration and unique perspectives emerge from the gameplay. Still Wakes the Deep instead has three basic actions you repeat over the game, walking solely along linear hallways and uses gameplay solely to progress the narrative to its next beat.
The best character of the game is the oil rig. Its single interconnected level and its very Northern UK inhabitants provide a unique atmosphere. Over the course of the game, the rig gradually falls apart and begins succumbing to the North Sea. The (UK-based) developers obviously made an effort to make it very Scottish and that makes it much more charming and personable than if the characters were America. These aspects combined with the horror elements are basically the whole game.
The actual evil is a vague alien organism that probably doesn’t even have consciousness in a way we could understand. There is no central evil to fear, just pulsating webs of ichor threading their tendrils throughout the rig. The horror consumes the inhabitants of the rig and takes them over in a more conventional horror approach. They turn into grotesque abominations that roam various areas. These monsters retain elements of who they were, muttering mannerisms as they rip apart the people they find. It was interesting at first, but some more variation in the monsters would be good. They all were kind of samey and part of the horror is lost when you feel like they’re not actually a threat.
Music is passable. It adds to the ambience and the central theme is used well as a motif, but apart from that I have no real memories of any other songs.
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=jDFa24y8dk8&si=NAI02Z5epsdOhDvX – The main theme throughout the game is strongly related to bittersweet feelings of home and Suze (Caz’s wife).
Overall, the game is a good tight story. You’d never play it more than once and there is nothing to it except for the setting and story. Both are good, but apart from the Scottish oil rig setting, there is not much else here that is new. It feels like an indie film you watch and convince yourself is interesting at the time, but on reflection there is less to it than you think. It misses out on what makes gaming such a great experience and instead focuses on what makes TV OK.
Rating: 3/7 cannae do leccy as good as me.
Leave a Reply