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I love horror games but I make it a point to never play those that have you running and hiding from whatever it is that is trying to kill you. I don’t mind that as a gameplay section, but base the whole game around it? That’s it for me…I’m out. Weirdly, that’s exactly what Still Wakes The Deep is.
Yet, I go into it willingly because it had an interesting premise and the prospect of cool body horror.
Well, I’ve played the game and have my impressions.
Should you give it a shot?
What is Still Wakes The Deep?
Still Wakes The Deep is a first person walking simulator/ hide and seek horror game developed by The Chinese Room and published by Secret Mode. It’s available right now on the PC and Xbox Series S|X (it’s on Game Pass) and also on the Playstation 5.
You’re an electrician working on an isolated oil rig to hide from an assault you committed. That soon backfires as the cops find out you’re hiding on the rig and your supervisor fires you because he doesn’t want to get involved.
It’s just you’re about the leave the station when it all goes to hell.
It’s a familiar premise, but so far, video games have thus far tried to stay away from being on oil rigs. We have a ton of horror movies set on oil rigs/ research stations and the like but video gaming entries?
Not so common.
Being a fan of The Rig (you definitely should be watching it if you have Amazon Prime Video), The Thing, Leviathan, Underwater, Aliens and all the sci-fi horror movies that revolve around a similar concept, I went into Still Wakes The Deep fully expecting to be thrilled with the atmosphere and the monsters.
Body horror on an oil rig?! Woooooo! Where do I sign up for this ride?!
I wasn’t let down…but I have to say, I wasn’t terribly impressed either.
Still Wakes The Deep like Outlast (arguably the creator of the hide and seek horror genre), feels like a two note machine.
One part is the walking simulator bit, where you’re wandering around the Beira D oil rig as it falls apart around your head, trying to find a way off. The other bit is the horror part, where former crewmates come for you (these are all set pieces so they don’t happen during the walking sections) and you have to hide and escape from them and make it to your next objective.
The game alternates between the two, as McCleary (that’s your character) desperately tries to escape from the horror. Unfortunately, it’s here that the plot starts to get a predictable.
Multiple escape options are scratched off one by one, which means you’re never surprised when a potential escape method fails. Lifeboats predictably fail. The helicopter crashes. That sort of thing.
You know the game can’t end in the first hour or so, so there’s little point in being excited about all the rescue options the game throws at you initially. The game doesn’t get better as you play and the ending is ultimately unsatisfying as well.
While the slow boil to reveal the cause of the strange fleshy structures (and why your crewmates are being turned into abominations) is rather good, I honestly felt that the build-up could’ve used much more context.
Your first encounter with one of the infected, in the oil rig’s water tanks should’ve been a tense and palm sweating affair but my heart rate didn’t skip a beat and I didn’t even feel my pulse quicken. I was more focused on finding my way through the maze (of which there are many) then trying to figure out what the hell is hunting me down there.
It doesn’t even help that the infected seems to retain some of their humanity, even when transformed into grotesque monstrosities. A monster talking to me isn’t scary. Xenomorphs don’t call out to their victims, so when I encountered McLeary’s supervisor furiously shouting that McLeary should’ve left when he was ordered to (all the while chasing me as a monster), it killed all the panic I was experiencing.
Instead of fear, I was more annoyed that the game didn’t respect my efforts at all. At this point in the game, McLeary had already tried TWO different ways to escape and was working on his third! Worse, the supervisor knew that because McLeary had updated him!
Seriously, all I’ve been doing was trying to escape and the game berates me for it. I felt more like taking a stand and telling the monster exasperatedly that’s exactly what I’ve been doing the whole time! What else did he expect me to do? Jump into the water and swim for it?!
I really didn’t enjoy the other encounters either. Not one of them was fun enough for me to go, ‘Wow! That was cool!’. I got frustrated a couple of times due to being slow (and dying) but I never really got stumped or felt that I was in peril.
Certainly nothing like when I played Alien Isolation.
It got to the point that I dreaded encountering a monster I’d need to outwit or sneak away from. All the ‘fights’ are the same, no matter the location. You either hide, throw items to distract the creature or just make a mad dash for it to the objective. The creatures aren’t like Resident Evil’s Nemesis, and will give up as soon as you’re past the set piece you’re currently in.
You don’t have any other options of fighting or escaping, so everything starts to feel boring after the first few encounters. It’s the same damn reason I hated Outlast. There’s not even the draw of something like Alien Isolation’s incredible Xenomorph AI (which is programmed to react intelligently) to keep things interesting here.
Incredulous encounters aside, I did enjoy the atmosphere on the oil rig.
As it slowly changed from a shoddily constructed structure to one that’s clearly been infested by whatever it is that came from the depths of the ocean, I had a jolly time just taking in the sights. The cramped corridors, the darkened interiors…it’s all wonderfully done and fits the theme real well.
On the flip side, there’s barely anything of note during these exploration bits. You can find pieces of information here and there but nothing that’s really hidden or secreted away. The game’s incredibly linear and there’s zero way off the beaten path. It’s always a straight path from Objective A to Objective B, with no option to explore between.
That pretty much kills any replay value the game has, because there’s nothing to miss or experience the second time around.
The environmental art is pretty decent and I’m actually intrigued by the enemy designs too. They look like something heavily inspired by The Thing and H.P. Lovecraft, with human parts melding with the unnatural. I would actually buy the game’s artbook if there was one and it delved more into the game’s art design choices.
Running maxed on our gaming rig, I was kind of put off by the visuals. Or rather the texture quality. Still Wakes The Deep is running on Unreal Engine 5 but it sure as hell doesn’t look like it. It’s a far cry from the Unreal Engine 5 tech demos you can find floating around on Youtube.
Textures look fugly, even on their highest settings (especially when you’re up close to them) and the animation can look stilted and unnatural. Even player movement is a chore. McLeary’s sprint is more akin to a lethargic stumble and there’s little difference between it and his regular walking speed.
Thankfully, the frame rate stays stable, even when there’s a ton of effects at play. Fog, particles and lighting (no Ray Tracing though) are really good and set the stage nicely. The gore factor should’ve been much, much higher since Still Wakes The Deep is a game about body horror and that’s one of the biggest strikes for the game in my view.
The Bottom Line.
Still Wakes The Deep tries something new (the setting) with a healthy helping of tried and true (everything else). The result is something that works wonderfully in parts (the art design, monsters, atmosphere and environments) but fails horribly in others (the enemy encounters and linearity).
It’s something I’d recommend to play if you’ve nothing else (and you’re a fan of body horror like me) but it’s definitely not something that you’ll kick yourself for not playing.
TLDR:
Cool premise and enemy design but gameplay is boring and super linear.
The Good:
- Unique setting.
- The enemy design.
The Bad:
- Boring enemy encounters.
- Incredibly linear.
- Zero replay value.
Salehuddin Husin, EIC
Sal's been in the industry since the early 2000s. He's written for a ton of gaming and tech publications including Playworks, Hardwarezone, HWM and GameAxis. Recently, Sal served as a juror for the Indie Game Awards at Taipei Game Show 2020. A geek and hardcore gamer, Sal will play everything, on any platform.
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