Still Wakes the Deep makes the terror of the ocean more tactile

The sea is basically the blue skin of the world, yet we know so little of its depths. Much like the vastness of space, it is filled with mystery. With both comes the unknown — and, therefore, horror. In Still Wakes the Deep, the latest first-person horror from The Chinese Room, the sea births a mysterious terror that takes over an oil rig, and its workers must fight to survive.

Somewhere in the middle of the ocean, players are introduced to protagonist McLearly, a Scottish oil rig’s troublesome electrician. From the beginning, I was incredibly impressed by the voice acting, writing, and performance. Most of the crew are Glaswegians, who use colloquial terms and slang, which the game warns can be “translated” by turning on subtitles. McLearly (Alec Newman, who plays Cyberpunk 2077’s Adam Smasher and Divinity: Original Sin 2’s Beast, among others) is a very likable protagonist. When we first meet him, he’s fired for causing an onshore brawl that’d led police to the rig, much to his boss’s dismay. As he’s leaving via chopper, the rig strikes something — or something strikes the rig — far below the surface.

From there, everything turns to chaos, as bioluminescent tentacles and large leaves that look like seaweed begin covering the entire rig. But when it interacts with humans, it subsumes them, turning into horrific monsters out of John Carpenter’s The Thing.

McLearly must use his skills as an electrician to navigate his way out of the nautical nightmare. Environmental puzzles — involving turning levers and wheels, putting out fires, and pushing and pulling in the right sequence — make up the majority of your time, all the while the rig is groaning and coming apart and the screams of turned friends and colleagues echo through the metallic hallways.

The game is, at times, wonderfully terrifying, and I was impressed by the creature designs. Friends who you meet early in the game now scream and belt out threats and concerns they had while fully human, their flesh permanently tethered to the growing alien menace that has taken over the rig. (It’s never explained what the menace or monster or virus is, only that it comes from the sea.) When you’re stuck in these hallways with the monsters, McLearly can only hide, throw objects, and sneak past. There’s no combat and insta-death, which can prove somewhat frustrating. You’re never certain when or where a monster will hear you, and the game seems to have a very strict, internally consistent idea of how to succeed in cat-and-mouse levels.

The game is incredibly tactile. Intuitive button mapping meant I always felt embodied in McLearly, from pulling levers to climbing to sliding down ladders. The developers have done an excellent job putting you in McLearly’s shoes, allowing you to see his entire body as he climbs and crawls. McLearly unscrews vents, grabs to pull himself through dark water, slips and slides, cries out, and swears when trying to take leaps. Aside from feeling like I embodied him, McLearly’s reactions to what he was doing also seemed like he was embodying me: taking a huge leap meant I sometimes swore and, hilariously, found McLearly shouting the same when he landed.

As with previous Chinese Room titles, the original orchestral score is bold and loud when you eventually hear it. But unlike Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, where Jessica Curry’s score did so much to tell that story, here, it’s muted, with few waves of music rushing in. Much of the ambience comes from the rig collapsing, the sound of destruction serving as the music of annihilation rather than a powerful choir. Jason Graves (composer for Supermassive’s horror titles and The Order: 1886) does a good job here, even if it does not live up to Curry’s work. 

The oil rig itself is impressively detailed, with its lifelike textures and appropriate signage, old switch-operated phones, and realistic monitors. While you can’t interact with much of the world, it still feels lived in, a place people had occupied and made their own — especially when visiting individual crew’s quarters.

The level of detail, combined with excellent sound direction, really made me feel like I was in the rig. You will be forced to double back to areas, and your familiarity will assist in navigating a level: doors and passageways you walked through untouched are now blocked by debris, or your friend has turned into a giant, tentacled monster. I appreciated the developers’ strict focus on one specific location, with limited areas, allowing them to demonstrate slow destruction in a way that was tangible.

Though it doesn’t push the genre anywhere new, Still Wakes the Deep is a worthy addition to the horror canon — and further proof that the great void of the ocean is something I want to avoid.

Still Wakes the Deep launches June 18th on PS5, Xbox Series X / S, and PC.