Videogames have the unique opportunity to confront thalassophobic nightmares, our fear of deep, dark water expressly manifested by gameplay situations meant to trigger our most innate sensory terrors. Still Wakes the Deep invests fully in this sensation. Aboard an oil rig in the North Sea, the crew have uncovered something they shouldn’t, having drilled into a sealed source of energy that has spread like an infection across the drilling derrick. As Caz, an electrician aboard the rig, we will investigate the strange Eldritch forces subsuming our fellow Scottish oil workers, while confronting his own traumatic past.
Call it a Walking Simulator, cause Still Wakes the Deep continues Scottish developer The Chinese Room’s tradition of ethereal exploration games — see Dear Esther (2012) & Everyone’s Gone to Rapture (2015). As the impetus of the developer’s design began with mods to Half-Life 2 (2004), the remnants of that design philosophy are still locked securely in place. A Chinese Room game still feels very much like added value put on a larger design, only now it’s just their game to account for, and it’s very successful at what it wants to do, partially, and begs for more layers of design, in other respects.
Our journey through the oil rig is pathed ahead for us. We’re moving along the large drilling vessel just as the game wants us to do. There is not really any agency in this. It’s Christmas-time and the sea is dark and black and looks like it wants to swallow us whole. The oil rig itself is grim, portentously thick in Eldritch atmosphere, with lots of veiny alien-looking substances growing throughout the rig, little pulsating sacks of eggs growing in random corners, and many of our coworkers, who we meet in the introductory moments before it all goes to hell, having turned into grotesque monsters with spindly spider-like appendages.
Our movement through the oil rig is well-considered, if slow-going. The game pattern rests on simple objectives: Little environmental puzzles that open up pathways to continue. Then, every several rooms, we’re confronted with the specter of the workers who have turned into real abominations. The game doesn’t handle its stealth stuff super well. The mechanics feel shallow here, we just go ducking into this vent or that, sometimes throw a hammer or a hard hat and distract a looming horrorish creature, then get to the next space before they say “I see you!” and rip your guts out. It takes loads of trial and error, which presses up against the directness of the design, and asks questions like, what if there were other ways to proceed, besides choosing what vent to go down or when to hide in a locker? It all feels static and binary and getting past these big ugly creatures does not feel so much like overcoming or outsmarting them so much as just minding your own business and leaving them alone.
The horror of the deep, then, sits bubbling right at the surface. The game feels like a pot that is always about to boil over and never does. The expression of cosmic horror is thoughtful and well-integrated into the setting and the thickly lilting Scottish presentation of it all. Accent work done by the voice actors is peerless here, the game is, at the very least, a proud artifact of Scottish acting, and feels informed directly by the culture of the developers.
Still Wakes the Deep is an exciting prospect that never fully arrives at its fullest potential. We get down and dirty in the oil derrick but never really arrive at anything more horrifying than “we should probably wait this creature out for a second.” It’s in the thematic atmosphere where the game over-delivers and does create a captivating lens for nautical horror. But what else is down there, just waiting to wake up? We never do find out more than what’s evident pretty early on.
6/10
Reviewed on Steam Deck & Xbox