Video games have been particularly effective at the gross-out over the years. It’s when the lights go out and you feel something behind you, you hear it, you feel its breath against your ear, but when you turn around, there’s nothing there…” And the last and worst one: Terror, when you come home and notice everything you own had been taken away and replaced by an exact substitute. The Horror: the unnatural, spiders the size of bears, the dead waking up and walking around, it’s when the lights go out and something with claws grabs you by the arm. If you think about the implications of what is depicted in Layers of Fear 2, and pay attention to the narrative, this game works as both a beautiful homage to classic cinema, and as a genuine work of horror.Īs the great Stephen King himself once wrote, in exploring the basic foundations for how horror functions (King is actually a superb theorist to go with his novel writing skills): “The three types of terror: The Gross-out: the sight of a severed head tumbling down a flight of stairs, it’s when the lights go out and something green and slimy splatters against your arm. But is it scary without that? Yes, it resoundingly is so.

Aside from some ill-conceived but blissfully brief moments where an apparition chases you around, there’s no sense of physical danger in the game.

In a sense Layers of Fear 2 is one very brave horror game in that it lacks the physical sadism of more base horror films. Related reading: Lindsay’s review of the original Layers of Fear

Layers of fear 2 spoilers