While games like Gone Home have been praised for their storytelling, some players find the “walking simulator” genre to be a little too boring. The stakes are about as low as they can get, and there is very little actual gameplay. You walk around, maybe read some letters or inspect a few items, and occasionally you may even need to solve a simple puzzle like locating a key or flipping a switch.

Generally, walking simulators are more about theme and storytelling than excitement, but a new game on Steam Early Access called Layers of Fear proves that the genre can be every bit as exciting as more traditional games while still delivering an immersive storytelling experience. If nothing else, players would be hard pressed to call the game boring when it makes them dump their trunks every five minutes.

Like Gone Home, the entire plot of Layers of Fear takes place on a dark and stormy night inside a large home that is full of hints about the story. Taking on the role of an insane painter with a tragic past, players explore an increasingly disturbing house as they try to piece together the story behind his madness.

While any game can have creepy dolls and jump scares, Layers of Fear distinguishes itself through its clever use of camera tricks, which change the environment around players when they aren’t looking. Doors will disappear, paintings will flicker from classical portraits to horrific nightmares, and creepy things will keep happening just out of the corner of your eye. The transitions are all completely seamless, and the game really excels at subverting your expectations of when the scare is going to happen.

Unfortunately, the story cuts off rather abruptly a little more than an hour or so into the game, but this is to be expected of an unfinished Early Access game. As always, there are no guarantees when it comes to Early Access, but the current state of Layers of Fear is very promising, and it has already reached the coveted “Overwhelmingly Positive” tier of user reviews on Steam.

If the developers can maintain the same level of quality throughout the rest of the game, it could easily rival Amnesia: The Dark Descent as one of the most terrifying horror games on PC, and it could revolutionize the walking simulator genre.

Image courtesy of Bloober Team SA