Still Wakes The Deep Review — Deep Below The Waves

Still Wakes The Deep is my favorite horror game of the year so far and may very well be the most interesting one I’ve ever played. Taking advantage of an incredibly unique setting and drawing inspiration from classic horror, Still Wakes The Deep stands out amongst the crowd before absorbing said crowd into a disgusting meat amalgamation.

Still Wakes The Deep sees you playing as Caz, a troubled family man who ran off to an oil rig in the North Sea to allow some legal trouble to blow over. Things take a turn for the dreadful when the rig’s greedy, short-tempered overseer ignores the warnings of his crew and causes a devastating drilling accident. Something ancient, evil, and hungry awakens, quickly taking over the crew and forcing Caz to fight to escape its corrupting clutches.

Still Wakes The Deep very clearly takes inspiration from two of my favorite horror movies, The Thing and The Mist.

These inspirations are brilliantly and not so subtly strewn across the game. The former is present in the game’s monsters and whatever entity it is plunging the rig into chaos; This creature or old god or alien lifeform ( I won’t spoil it, but I can imagine those are your first three guesses) corrupts the crew into terrifying amalgamations of mutant fleshing, resembling something between a John Carpenter puppet and ocean life.

The game is brilliant with how it presents these monsters to you, using shadows, mists, debris, and other subtle visual methods to obscure the creatures from sight just enough to give you an idea of what they look like but still keep you wondering. The immersion and terror of these creature’s presence is never broken by over-exposure, and the game’s use of horrifying, pulpy sound effects paints a picture of something awful and inhuman lurking just out of sight in many of the game’s dangerous encounter areas.

The inspiration for the mist is a little more subtle and could not have been intentional, but I certainly thought it was there. The cold, sea-steading oil rig makes for excellent set dressing. When you aren’t in the dark, claustrophobic lower decks of the rig, you’re subjected to overwhelming grey mists and an endless expanse of ocean that leaves you feeling isolated and helpless amongst the horror of what you awakened.

The segments taking place on the game’s decks are the ones that felt inspired by the mists. Awful, gigantic entities roam in this area, cutting a barely visibly silhouette amongst the eerily stark grey backdrop that feels oh so familiar.

Still Wakes The Deep is capable of some outright stunning and chilling visuals and isn’t afraid to throw them at you constantly. This is due in no small part to the developers’ decision to set the game on an oil rig, which carries the game incredibly well.

If you’ve playing Metal Gear Solid V, you have an idea of how interesting a setting like this can be in video games. However, unlike MGSV, Still Wakes The Deep examines the concept far beyond it just being a cool area to explore and implements the reality of such a setting into its horror.

Ledges are abundant in the game, where a strong wind or earthquake can easily toss you into the unforgiving, cold sea below. Cramped, dark, flooded hallways of pipes and metal trusses must be navigated with only the light of a flashlight. Excitingly dangerous platforming and climbing segments are everywhere and feel natural in the colossal rig’s skeleton. Never has a game made me feel like my ability on the monkey bars as a kid could save my life one day quite like Still Wakes The Deep does.

Still Wakes The Deep features a prominently Scottish cast and protagonist. This isn’t really something I’d usually point out, but I bring it to your attention because I love it for reasons I can’t quite explain. It feels incredibly unique given the genre, which almost exclusively populates horror games with American-speaking and sounding characters. It gives the game a bit of worldliness and charm, and I am just tickled by it in a way that is hard to articulate, but wanted to give props to the developers for it nonetheless.

The occasional glitch is present in Still Wakes The Deep. One that comes to mind is a particularly silly one. While having absolutely no impact on the gameplay, I did at one time turn around to spot that a hefty freight hook, with this tonnage of weight held up by equally massive steel chains, was bouncing around and twitching like a cat toy, presumably because something bumped into it.

There are little mechanical choices that go way further than you might think in making Still Wakes The Deep a great game. The flashlight, for example, is a necessary tool to navigate the game’s dark levels, but to keep you from having to decide between stumbling in the dark or alerting a monster to your presence, the developers made it so the beam of light flickers when placed on a creature, which also serves to keep the player from overexposing themselves to the monster and thus dampening the intrigue. The ability to look behind you while moving forward also makes for some incredibly cinematic chase scenes that players can admire without getting caught in a death loop.

Try Hard Guides received a PC review code for this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! Still Wakes The Deep is available on Steam, PlayStation and Xbox.