Twitter user pl_evil has helpfully translated a recent letter to shareholders from Bloober Team, showing that their new game "Project C" will be revealed later this year. This will be the studio's next original game, after they wrapped up Layers Of Fear last year with, confusingly, Layers Of Fear (the natural progression for a series: Layers Of Fear, Layers Of Fear 2, and then Layers Of Fear again, although it was going to be called Layers Of Fears at one point).
Bloober Team are currently doing a lot of IP work for other people, with the Silent Hill 2 remake due out later this year, and a game codenamed "Project R" in concert with Skybound Entertainment. Skybound are The Walking Dead company, so I wouldn't give you long odds for a bet on what Project R is about. Neither would I be surprised if Project C is unveiled this summer by a man named Geoff with shiny shiny trainers. I'm interested to see what it is, and honestly I'm hoping it's a brand new standalone thing, rather than a forced sequel to Observer or 2021's The Medium (where I got the header).
]]>Bloober Team, developers of Layers of Fear, The Medium and the upcoming Silent Hill 2 remake, have added another notable name to their plans for the next few years. The horror-focused studio is working with the creators of zombie comic book-turned-TV show The Walking Dead on a new video game adaptation.
]]>This episode it's Halloween in July, as Indiescovery sets out to answer our listeners' most burning question: "Now that Rachel and Liam have both had a turn, when does Rebecca get her main character moment?" It starts now, friends, as your resident horror maven takes you on a whistle-stop tour of my favourite indie horror games, ranging from the silly (Simulacra) to the serious (Detention), and from psychological spooks (Layers Of Fear) to outright jump-scares (Dark Deception).
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]]>After giving us a release window for horror collection Layers Of Fear, developers Bloober Team have now set a concrete date: June 15th, 2023. The game previously changed its name earlier in the year, dropping the pluralisation of Layers Of Fears. Presumably, it'll still explore more than one fear, though. You can see for yourself as the game released a new demo today, available on Steam until May 22nd.
]]>Layers Of Fear — recently quietly renamed from its working title Layers Of Fears — is a game that requires a bit of explanation. It shares its title with the 2016 game of the same name, and is being overseen by original developers Bloober Team. But it's neither a remake nor a reboot; although, in some ways, it's both of those things. It's more a "reimagining" of the whole Layers Of Fear series to date, as well as its apparent swansong. It incorporates ground-up remakes of the two-and-a-half existing games in the series in Unreal Engine 5, alongside a new gaiden chapter complementing the first game, and a brand-new framing narrative tying the whole lot together.
I recently sat in on an early preview presentation of Layers Of Fear, chatting with creative director Damian Kocurek. Listeners to one very specific episode of the EWS podcast might recall that I'm something of a Layers Of Fear lore theorist, so of course I was delighted to nerd out over what this new(ish) game is all about. Similarly detail-oriented horror fans out there will hopefully share my excitement when I tell them that yes, the rats are back, and you can even catch a brief glimpse of the Rat Queen.
]]>Last year, developer Bloober Team unveiled Layers Of Fears, the next entry in their first-person horror series. At the time it was hard to gauge if the game was a sequel, a pseudo-remake, or something in between. We now have a clearer view of what it really is ahead of its release this June, and it’s also (confusingly) changed its name back to Layers Of Fear, singular. Check out the new trailer below:
]]>Happy New Year, folks! Crikey, there are a lot of games coming out this year, aren't there? When I first asked the team to put together their most anticipated games for 2023, I was thinking we'd have a reasonably sensible number of things we were all looking forward to, you know, somewhere in the region of the 43 games we highlighted at the start of 2022. Very quickly, though, it became apparent that, actually, there are simply loads of games the RPS Treehouse is personally excited about this year, and cor, it would be rude not to include every last one of them. I'll be upfront: there are a fair number of TBA games on here that probably aren't going to come out in 2023, but as ever, we remain hopeful and optimistic all the same. So let's dive in.
]]>Summer Game Fest just got scary with the announcement of psychological horror Layers Of Fears, the next instalment in Bloober Team’s jump-fest series that might really be a remaster, sort of? Bloober say it's the "psychedelic experience fans know and love" and has "an expanded plotline", so this doesn't sound like an entirely new game. The freshly revealed Layers Of Fears is being built in Unreal Engine 5. As such, the trailer makes for pleasantly unpleasant viewing.
]]>October's here, so it's time to start putting on a few extra layers. Of clothes, sure, but maybe some extra layers of spooks too. Layers Of Fear developers Bloober Team have just released a new trailer teasing a return to their series about creatives types in frightening locales. The next of the series, from the looks of it, might be headed back to the drawing board—or the canvas perhaps—with another story about a painter.
]]>Remember when P.T. came out on the PS4 and everyone went wild for it, because Guillermo del Toro and Hideo Kojima had made the scariest thing ever? And then Konami cancelled Silent Hills and removed P.T. from the PlayStation store? Well, if you’re hankering for a version of P.T. about an obsessive artist making a painting from bits of his dead wife, then boy, do I have a game for you! Yes, it’s Layers Of Fear, the definitive 'how-to' for creatives who want to murder their loved ones and then rattle around their mansion for years, constantly haunted by their own memories.
]]>I'd missed that 2016's first-person spooker Layers Of Fear was getting a sequel but: oh, it is. No, not Observer, the ace cyberspooky game that developers Bloober Team made next, an actual sequel with a number and everything. Layers Of Fear 2 is its name, and wandering a spooky boat telling the tale of a suffering actor is its game. They've even got a proper fancy actor to narrate this terrible tale, Tony Todd, who you might know as the Candyman or Worf's brother off Star Trek. Here, hear his ace voice in this new trailer.
]]>A houseful of hauntings can be had for free right now, as Bloober Team are giving away Layers Of Fear for keepsies for the next few days on Steam. It's a first-person spooker about a kooky-ooky painter who goes out his gourd trying to paint his masterpiece. Layers Of Fear is often a grab bag of clichés--dolls, shadowy figures crossing corridors ahead of you, jumpscares of terrible faces--that make it a bit hollow, but it does have some surprising and creative tricks particularly involving paintings. For free, sure, check out these spooky tricks.
]]>What do you call a storefront dummy wearing a Star Wars costume? Mannequin Skywalker. Hello, this post has nothing to do with Star Wars and only a little to do with mannequins. Painterly horror game Layers of Fear is free on Humble today. It’s a short game, about three or four hours long, and contains ghosts. In many ways, the perfect stocking filler.
]]>In Observer [official site], AKA David Cronenberg's Bladerunner, Rutger Hauer is having a very bad day. It begins with a phone call, some family problems, and ends in blood and regret. Hauer lends his voice to the player character, who is the titular Observer, a special kind of cop who can jack into suspects' memories, hopes and fears as a means of interrogation. To do so, he inserts a cable into a chip lodged in their brain and connects it to his own gray matter.
Around a quarter of the way through this particular grim night, he dives into the mind of a person who has just died, an act of necro-hacking that is totally against protocol. That's when things get really weird.
]]>First-person spooker Layers of Fear [official site] will receive an expansion in August, developers Bloober Team have announced. Named 'Inheritance', it'll return to that mad painter's house to poke around from his daughter's perspective. The original game pulls some jolly clever tricks shifting between reality and artistic visions, so it'll be interesting to see what awaits his daughter - and how that looks.
]]>"What would you do if your fears got hacked and used against you?" asks Observer, the latest first-person horror fest from Layers of Fear devs Bloober Team. I'd be suitably terrified, I imagine. Especially when this venture drops us into a cyberpunk world filled with glitch-ridden corridors, eery holograms, weird implant machinery and ominous shadow stalkers.
Aye, I'd say terrified pretty much covers it. Shall we watch its duo of trailers together after the drop? Go on, you first.
]]>Every corridor and room in Layers of Fear [official site] has something frightening hiding in its recesses. It might be an apparition, head rattling like an escapee from Jacob's Ladder, or a piece of furniture that is preparing to launch itself across the room like the toy thrown from a poltergeist's pram. The story of a painter attempting to overcome a creative block as he seeks to finish a masterpiece, it crept out of Early Access this week. Here's wot I think.
]]>Where do all these haunted paintings come from? eBay's full of the devils, but the listings only say they bought it at a car boot sale or found it in the loft of an aunt who died of spooking - they never identify the painter. Maybe Layers of Fear [official site] will be able to answer a few questions. It's a first-person spooker set inside the spooky house of a painter whose membrane is compromised. Maybe he paints 'em all? We'll find out, as after a stretch in Early Access Layers of Fear is heading for a full and proper release on February 16th.
]]>Each week Marsh Davies lets fly at the blank canvas of Early Access and either returns with a masterpiece or ends up rocking back and forth in a corner eating Unity Asset Store crayons. This week he’s played Layers of Fear, a linear boo-scare walk-em-up set in the reassembling spooOOooky house of a maaAAaad painter.
I’m not sure a household needs more than one reproduction of The Abduction of Ganymede. It’s a fine work, sure, but I don’t want to be staring at a pissing toddler’s dangling bum while I’m having dinner, let alone every time I turn a corner in my home. But then, I’m not really sure of a lot of the other decorative choices that my character appears to have made here - the cupboard of black phlegm, the infinite library, the hell mirror, the Erik Satie levitation cellar, the room of bad chairs. Not even Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen would go so far as to daub “ABANDON HOPE WHILE YOU STILL CAN” above a doorway. It doesn’t even make sense, Laurence!
]]>You may have noticed that Metal Gear Solid V is happening today and, if you're anything like me, all of this Kojima talk might bring Silent Hills to mind. The cancelled horror game was to combine the talents and imaginations of Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro, and its "playable teaser", P.T., caused a heck of a stir when it landed on PS4. It's gone now, cast into the void of unbeing by Konami. but worry not (or 'worry a great deal', I guess) because Layers of Fear [official site] is a splendid replacement. It's an Early Access horror game that feels polished, complete and is so frightening that when I started playing last night, I had to wait until morning to play more.
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