Still Wakes the Deep review

    STILL WAKES THE DEEP is a cosmic horror "walking simulator" that is produced by The Chinese Room (Vampire: The Masquerade: Bloodlines 2). It takes place on a Scottish oil rig during the 1970s with issues like labor politics, xenophobia, and poor safety standards being background before things utterly go to hell when they do as the dwarves of Moria did and dig too deep. I am an easy sell for almost anything H.P. Lovecraft inspired and was already sold on the premise.  In 2005, I watched The Rig and also played The Iron Rig DLC for the similarly Cthulhu Mythos-esque Dredge.

    The protagonist, Caz, is an electrician who is presently on the run from the police. Having gotten into a bar fight that went too far, Chaz isn't wanted for murder but did put a guy in the hospital. Getting a job on the oil rig thanks to a friend, he is almost immediately sussed out and fired on the spot. It turns out that a shoddily maintained oil rig isn't the best place you want to bring police attention.

    This early part of the game introduces us to many of the working class stiffs on the oil rig that range from their union representative (nicknamed "Trots" because he's a little too enthusiastic about collective bargaining) and the sole woman onboard, Finley, who is as nontraditional as women in video games come being a stoic middle aged working mother.

    Despite describing this as a walking simulator, I'd argue that this is actually a full fledged video game even if the controls are somewhat simple. You do a lot of puzzle solving, platforming, and stealth throughout the game. The monsters are invincible and will instantly kill you if they lay their hands on you but the stealth is pretty forgiving. Their designs seem inspired by The Thing and are very effective but for one that looks absolutely silly. The story seems to draw a lot from The Colour out of Space as the Entity warps both the sanity as well as bodies of those involved.

    The atmosphere throughout the game is thick with tension and while significantly easier than, say, Alien: Isolation, I felt that it worked wonders. The old creaking and damaged oil rig is a place that Chaz must race around trying to keep operational long enough to evacuate. While I would have appreciated more time with the survivors, I also felt like Chaz genuinely knew all of the people that we find dead around him.

    The game is on the short side with four to five hours if you don't get stuck. There's no collectibles or sidequests but only a linear progression from area to area. I think this is a good thing rather than a bad thing because horror games benefit from shortened length so they don't wear out their welcome. Sadly, they don't learn this lesson in the DLC expansion Siren's Rest, as there's just not enough scares to justify the purchase price.

    In conclusion, Still Wakes the Deep is a great video game and one that I had a huge amount of fun playing. Chaz is an excellent protagonist and the setting is extremely creepy even before the Entity starts making it more Dead Space than Scotland. The attention to detail is so good that they actually included an option for the subtitles to translate all of the Scottish slang used by the workers. 

Available here