GOTY 2016 | Number 6 — Layers of Fear

Look­ing back at my list from 2014, I actu­al­ly gave the top spot on my list to a demo. This Playable Teas­er, or P.T. if you will, fea­tured some inno­v­a­tive ideas about hor­ror games that left me reel­ing when the full game was even­tu­al­ly can­celled. A few games have attempt­ed to live up to the promise of what Silent Hills was going for and the best among them thus far is Lay­ers of Fear. Tak­ing the sim­i­lar con­cept of tra­vers­ing sim­i­lar areas and apply­ing its own brand of mind-bend­ing visu­als, Lay­ers of Fear is full of the right kinds of scares.

Sto­ry­telling is a tricky thing to do in a hor­ror game, espe­cial­ly when most of it involves some read­ing. Lay­ers of Fear man­ages to tell an unnerv­ing sto­ry, while keep­ing the scares fair­ly fre­quent. All of this con­tributes to the excel­lent pac­ing found with­in this stand­out hor­ror title. As you progress through the ever-chang­ing halls of the house, it man­ages to keep you con­stant­ly on edge as you quick­ly learn­ing that nowhere is safe from a scare. This ten­sion feels earned as the vari­ety and obscu­ri­ty of the scares in Lay­ers of Fear kept it spook­ing me from begin­ning to end. If I turn around right now, Lay­ers of Fear is like­ly to be lurk­ing as my num­ber six in my top ten games of 2016.