“Walking Simulator” has become a bit of a derogatory term in the way people talk about video games. It insinuates that nothing happens between a game’s narrative beats. It also insinuates that gameplay takes precedence over everything, and that if you’re not shooting, punching, or slapping your way through hordes of enemies, the overall experience is lacking. It’s a tired criticism from players who refuse to meet a game on its level and engage with the material. Still Wakes the Deep, the latest horror survival from The Chinese Room, will be labeled as a “Walking Sim” by some. While I can see why they may call it that, it undermines the game’s masterful atmospheric storytelling. The oil rig setting is a prime location for exploring isolation and disaster. The atmosphere and narrative endeavors are equally matched by the game’s voice acting. There are some gameplay aspects that ding the overall package, but that doesn’t keep Still Wakes the Deep from being a horrifically sad (and full) experience.
Set in 1975, on Beira D, an oil rig off the coast of Scotland, Still Wakes the Deep puts players in the shoes of Scottish electrician, Cameron “Caz” McLeary. The “leccy” professional finds himself in trouble when Scottish police call him back to shore to answer for a previous assault. Before McLeary can leave, all hell breaks loose on the rig as the crew drills into something not of this world. The ensuing chaos unleashes monsters onto the rig, who proceed to kill and assimilate the crew into otherworldly masses. A majority of the game is spent avoiding these monsters as you navigate the different sections of the rig, looking for a way out of this nightmare.
The opening section of the game immediately paints a detailed picture of the world. It’s Christmas day. Members of the crew lounge about while you dig through their private rooms. This space feels well lived in and ripe for exploration. Roaming the halls of the accommodation quarters, you’ll spot numerous posters concerning worker safety and union efforts. I spent a good amount of time taking in every form of humanity scattered about each room. The letters from loved ones, sports paraphernalia, and anti-union posters all tease out the men (and one woman) who make up this crew. The defining relationship of the game between McLeary and Roy hints at their lives before working on the rig. The game works hard to get you to care about the crew early on. It mostly works, but outside of Roy and a few others, I struggled to recall who the person I just heard being torn apart actually was.
The voice acting here is top notch. Alec Newman sells the hell out of the struggling McLeary. Small details throughout, take the performance to the next level. From the long breaths after swimming underwater, to the shudders from the cold. You can tell Newman was really going for it in the booth. Clive Russell as the antagonistic supervisor, Rennick, goes all in as a despicable rig manager you hate in no time. Karen Dunbar, Michael Abubakar, Neve McIntosh, and Shaun Dooley round out a supporting cast of nothing but stellar performances.
Post-disaster, Still Wakes the Deep is very much on rails. Yellow paint is used to signify your path throughout the many dimly lit sections of the rig. This takes away from the horror a tad bit. The scariest moments in similar titles come from not fully knowing your surroundings, which leads to horrifying moments where you wander into corners with a major threat breathing down your neck. Here you can navigate through some of the scariest sections with ease. Sure, it keeps you from repeating some parts you may find tedious, but you’re trading off some scares for the convenience.
The game has numerous lockers you can hide from monsters in, but I found myself never actually needing them. Simply following the path and occasionally tossing a wrench or a can to lure the monster away, was all I needed to make it through these sections. All that said, I still found most of the encounters scary. One such encounter found me hiding in a crawl space near a washing machine, turning around to catch a glimpse of the face of what used to be Trots lunging toward me. I counted three separate monsters at one point, each with their own horrifying visual twists to make them stand out.
Navigating the rig is as deadly as the monsters pursuing you. Beira D would give any HSE or OSHA inspector nightmares. The place is actively falling apart, forcing McLeary to get creative. You’ll find yourself walking planks, climbing ladders and panels, and ducking through air vents. In the back-half, the game starts to introduce areas where you’ll swim through floodwaters. These sections can be aggravating. The swimming controls are communicated as well as they could be. I found myself drowning numerous times in a specific section that left no room for error. I did this until I finally realized I didn’t have the swimming controls fully explained to me. There are a handful of puzzles to solve along the way. These vary from flipping switches to finding a key needed to turn on a machine. There’s no real challenge in the task itself, but it keeps the story moving forward.
The game is visually just a joy to look at. The rig really is one of the big stars of the show here. Even as it starts to fall apart, I couldn’t help but get sucked into the details all around me. The irony of safety posters plastered on the wall as safety conditions worsened, gave me a bit of a laugh. The game dabbles in exploring labor and worker conditions. I may have had issues remembering each member of the crew, but McLeary gasped with each newly discovered corpse. To me, each corpse was just a bloated, meaty monstrosity. To McLeary, these were men he formed bonds with, who had lives, on and off the rig. They weren’t just worker bees, building wealth for some asshole back on the shore.
This leads into the game’s other major theme of perception. Throughout the campaign, McLeary is terrified of seeing his wife, Suze, again. They left on bad terms after he ran to the rig, to avoid jail time from a previous bar assault. Again and again, McLeary worries about what terrible things Suze will have to say about him, only for Roy to talk him down each time. It’s a fascinating throughline in the narrative, one that comes to a satisfying conclusion in the end.
Still Wake the Deep isn’t reinventing the horror genre, but it doesn’t need to. A fascinating atmospheric setting mixed with stellar voice performances creates an experience that isn’t just some “Walking Simulator”. It’s far from perfect, with some tedious underwater sections, and a key character bowing out a bit too early, but the overall experience is one rich in detail and character. The narrative’s exploration of perception and the feeling of being just another “body/cog” leave a lasting impression that will stick with you, long after your last shift on the rig.
