Scottish petrochemical horror isn’t precisely a style, however possibly it should be. From the opening moments of Nonetheless Wakes The Deep life on its Seventies North Sea oil rig is precarious. Leaky ceilings, busted panelling, defective drill equipment – the omens pile up as you spend your first thirty minutes wandering by the colleague-packed canteen and over the platform into the boss’ workplace for a extreme dressing-down. It is a basic pre-disaster setup for a principally conventional monster story, but the sport sticks expertly to the first-person horror kind, and its voice actors’ performances are so spot-on, that it’d really feel churlish to guage this foaming concern simulator for sticking to sort. It additionally has some markedly unsettling use of the delivery forecast, a famously boring function of British radio I positively didn’t anticipate to freak me out in a online game.
You’re Caz, an electrician employed on the Beira D, an oil rig working within the wet winter of 1975. Alongside you might be plenty of fellow employees pushed to the ends of their tethers, patching up the ragged rig with screws and their very own unease with bravado and banter. The sort of football-centric chat anticipated of a principally male crew within the 70s. Speaking to everybody on the rig is like taking an earbath in Scottish slang. Which sounds disgusting once I sort it out like that however in actuality is a refreshing change from the non-regionalised US chatter that always seems as the principle voice in video games writing. Scotland would not get many hyperlocalised tales like this in our trade (and positively none this high-fidelity) so it is pleasing for as soon as to listen to genuine Glaswegians playfully insulting each other and chatting concerning the darts, versus the exaggerated facsimile of the identical voice frothing out of the mouth of an indignant dwarf.
It is also humorous to see mentioned slang translated within the subtitles, the place “gobshite” turns into “bastard”, “rank” turns into “disgusting”, and “dinnae flap” turns into “do not panic”. A minimum of they did not attempt to translate “Buckie” to the plainer “Buckfast” when the infamously violent monk wine will get a namedrop. (In case your hankering for authenticity goes additional than even actuality dictates, there’s additionally an choice to play in Scottish Gaelic.)
After all, all the things goes tits-up. One thing fleshy and macabre makes its manner out of the ocean and onto the rig, spreading its tendrils and indignant, mother-of-pearl blisters into the helps and corridors. A lot of the remaining dialogue is perhaps summarised as [screeches in Scottish], as your crewmates succumb to monsterfication and gory loss of life. An early run-in with considered one of these monsterpals introduces you to a devoted “look behind you” button, a terrifying temptation for any horror sport fanatic. I discovered myself principally utilizing this to provide myself a jolt throughout chase sequences. However now and again I would hear a clunk of pipes behind me, or a distant cry, and press the button to look over my shoulder, solely to see nothing. Empty halls. Hole rooms.
![Strange fleshy tendons obstruct a corridor in Still Wakes The Deep.](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/still-wakes-the-deep-review-10.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
So far as what the sport usually feels prefer to play, its determined vent-crawling, lever-pulling and locker-hiding put me most in thoughts of Alien: Isolation. The themes of employees present in unsafe situations has particular parallels to the stretched crew of the Nostromo and the damaged infrastructure of Sevastopol station. The lifeboats are fitted with crappy cables, damaged doorways fail to open for trapped engineers, and the rig’s foul-mouthed supervisor insists the monster drawback is merely a “minor drill subject” far previous the purpose of disaster. But not like Alien: Isolation, it would not overrun its horrorspan, taking me seven hours to finish, a very good size to keep up concern issue.
That concern would not solely come from the monsters. The voices and behavior of the crew are so firmly grounded that when it begins to introduce acquainted online game duties, akin to balancing your manner throughout a beam suspended above a raging sea, my seafarer mind mentioned: “Naw mate, naw”. In every other circumstance, I might have accepted the intense yellow beam as a satisfactory, anticipated factor, as frequent as a purple barrel able to explode. Right here, the primary time these traversable sport obstacles confirmed up, I felt professional anxiousness. Caz isn’t an arms aloft stuntperson, he is an electrician with no expertise of such an emergency. Once you lastly do method beams, his limits develop into clear. Caz drops to his knees and crawls throughout the beams slowly and swearily.
![The sea swirls in a storm below the oil rig's underside.](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/still-wakes-the-deep-review-9.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
![A contorted mass of flesh is bursting through the metal bars of a ventilation shaft.](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/still-wakes-the-deep-review-8.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
![Rennick, the oil rig's boss, orders the player to sit in a chair in his office.](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/still-wakes-the-deep-review-4.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
![Three rig workers talk about industrial action on the Beira D.](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/still-wakes-the-deep-review-1.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
The sport loses a few of that grounded attraction later, by upping the peril to incorporate ridiculous motion film climbing options in situations the place any regular individual can spot a number of safer routes, none supported by the sport’s pathing. However I can let this go. Vidgam gonna vidgam. Gone are the times when builders The Chinese language Room would slap you on a Hebridean island with solely the barest steering. Right here the visible language of first-person horror comes by with the readability required by the medium. Hiding areas are splashed with useful yellow paint. Arrows and maps regularly mark out your path. When a dangerous bounce is required, it’s made apparent. When you want to distract an enemy, there are instantly tons of throwable objects mendacity round.
The one time I felt this steering break down was in later moments when environments turned flooded. At some factors you might be submerged and have to tug your self alongside help beams whereas underwater. At one other, it’s a must to discover a right route whereas your breath shortly runs out. These are most likely essentially the most disorienting moments in the entire story and I felt extra aggravated by the next drownings than I used to be frightened. It additionally suffers from the standard drawback of sport horror, in that the stress is damaged the extra you die. This goes for each rising water and your groaning ex-colleagues.
These tentacled blistermen are usually not all alike. Every monster you encounter is deliberately and disturbingly named for the one who stays trapped within the hideous schlep of tendons, gristle, and sinew that propels them round. Their behaviour is usually related; they hunt and pursue and patrol. However every feels barely totally different. One towers above you on stilt-like legs. One other drags itself about on the ground like a slug. One other will shamelessly enter the vents you cover inside, forcing you to be fast and decisive. Extra disturbing is how every moans in their very own manner, their pains and issues following them into monsterhood. A few of these issues have been as soon as your folks, and Caz is regularly swearing with horrified pity at them. Others, who have been antagonistic to you throughout the pre-disaster opening, really feel much more unmerciful and wretched in monster kind. I am taking a look at you Addair, you horrible fuck.
![Addair, a rig worker, insults the player in Still Wakes The Deep.](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/still-wakes-the-deep-review-2.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
It’s a nice hook. Not one of the enemies you encounter are faceless baddies. They’re acquainted, talking in haunting groans about how they’re sorry, sobbing that they miss their mum. They plead with you to assist, earlier than assailing you with an agonised wail of rage. One continues to strive doing the laundry with infuriated, ineffectual slams of a washer door. It is an previous theme of horror, that humanity and monstrousness can co-exist throughout the identical physique. However once more, Nonetheless Wakes The Deep carries that trope with such confidence and readability, it’s exhausting to care that you’ve got seen it earlier than.
And what about Caz, your individual character? He’s a messer with an upturned marriage and a legal historical past, a person who may as properly be strolling across the oil rig screaming “she’s turnt the weans against us” on the hideous fleshhorrors which have taken over. I imply that in a great way. I felt his private story of affection, cowardice and irresponsibility misplaced some momentum in the direction of the tip, when the sport begins to depend on well-worn disembodied voices and different weirdness to lean into psychological horror, versus the basic monster film it in any other case sticks to being. However for essentially the most half he is an effective protagonist – out of his depth, troubled, indignant and afraid in unequal measure. Like all of the others, the voice actor does a superb job, proper all the way down to the harried respiration that kicks in any time a monster comes close to you.
![Caz speaks to his friend Roy about the monsters that have appeared on their oil rig.](https://assetsio.gnwcdn.com/still-wakes-the-deep-review-11.jpg?width=690&quality=80&format=jpg&auto=webp)
The troubles of Caz, like these of others on the rig, really feel strange towards the backdrop of all this horror. And I really feel that is the sport’s nice power – in contrasting the otherworldly shimmering rainbow hellishness of Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation with the gray pessimism of a Caledonian winter. Caz’ private scramble for survival and forgiveness is only one manner by which its disturbing story may be learn. It is also interpreted because the screeching vengeance of a planet being bled dry. As a lament for the employee who’s pushed to destruction among the many pipes and equipment of capital. Because the tragedy that comes of a father’s abandonment and thoughtlessness. As a dirge for male friendship, a sorrowful acknowledgment that banter and soccer is a laughably weak social glue, a mere coping mechanism for the passing down of violence. It’s notable that there’s one lady on board the Beira oil rig, the engineer Finlay. Relying by yourself temperament, it’s both her unblinkered resolve or her helpless resignation which ultimately lower by the veil of oil, blood, and testosterone.
Nevertheless you may step away from the rig, I stepped away rattled, impressed, and hungry for extra horror as stable as this. It might not revolutionise the style in any mechanical sense (even that “look behind you” button is one thing from the Outlast collection) but it surely does set a bar for groundedness and naturalistic voice performing. Extra Scottish horror? Aye, make it first-person anaw.
This assessment relies on a assessment construct of the sport supplied by the developer.