Layers of Fear is a psychological/psychedelic horror game. Not exact the type of game you expect to find on a Nintendo console. The game itself has been released since February 2016, so it’s 2 years old. It got overwhelmingly positive critiques on Steam. So, many popular YouTubers have played the game when it came out. Some even before the release when it was just in early access on Steam. The game has been around the gaming community for a little short of 3 years now.
In Layers Of Fear you play as a deranged painter that is trying to paint his masterpiece. You have to find 6 different objects (which will remain unnamed) to use in your painting to make it truly perfect. While on your hunt for these objects some of the memories and facts of your past come to light and suggest that you might be in fact completely crazy. You walk through hallway after hallway trying to find a way out, but everything just keeps changing. Sometimes you go through a door and when you go back out the very same door, you find yourself in a completely different room than before.
When the game progresses even the rooms you are in change behind your back, so when you look around or at certain object, everything behind you shifts. There are a lot of awesome and cool mechanics that give this game an extra creepy edge. It reminds me a bit of Outlast because in a lot of moments you don’t really have control over what happens. You have to go to a certain spot, which sometimes is very obvious, to trigger the event. However, there’s a limited amount of choices you can make. These choices impact your game and can result in one of 3 different endings.
The game itself is very well made, the only thing you can really say about it is that it can get a bit repetitive in the middle part. However, we are not here today to discuss a 2-year-old game. No, we want to know how it plays on Nintendo’s newest platform: The Switch! Well let’s get right to that part.
It’s kind of strange when you open the game and the happy Nintendo menu music transitions into the horror sounds that accompany Layers of Fear. And again, when you had enough jump scares for the day and you close the game, there is that nice Nintendo music greeting you and reassuring you that it will all get better. The controls are a little hard, the way you look around is very slow and that makes you feel like you’re even less in control than you think you are. But that is the case for all platforms except the PC.
The graphics on the switch are very good, either in handheld mode or on your big screen, the game looks really good. When you compare it to the Steam version, it does become clear that it loses a bit in quality but not any single bit more than you would have noticed on PS4 or Xbox One.
It isn’t the first horror game to release on the Switch, but it does mean a lot for the future of the console. If they manage to get third-party developers to make any kind of game for Nintendo without their usual restrictions for family friendliness, then the console will appeal to a wider group of people, which will in turn make more developers interested in the Switch and will result in more games. That combined with the possibilities of the Switch will make for a big success. Games like Layers of Fear are a great example for what the switch is capable of and what it actually has to offer.
