Still Wakes The Deep review — What lurks beneath the waves

Stepping into the work boots of Caz McCleary, you take up the role of resident electrician aboard the Beira oil drilling platform. While you’re good with wiring, keeping the lights on quickly becomes the least of your worries as the drilling crew dredges up something otherworldly from the deep. A sprawling mass of flesh begins to spread throughout the rig, flooding the area with oil and killing numerous crew members as it expands. As the Beira begins to sink and your friends fall victim to unknown horrors, you must find a way to get back on dry land at any cost. 

Rather than taking the classic horror route of the main character being alone, there is actually quite a large cast of characters, which makes sense given the setting. Your best friend Roy the chef, the cut-throat boss Rennick, fellow coworkers Brodie and Finlay, and so many more keep the Beira in working order. The voice acting here is top notch, which was a welcomed surprise in this genre. It was always a relief to round a corner and see a friendly face, but it was much more eerie hearing the cries of your fellows succumbing to the monstrous horror creeping through the vessel. Even more twisted is the fact that this monster has the ability to transform people into extensions of itself, while the host clings to whatever sanity they have left within them. Sure, the monster itself is scary enough, but turning your friends against one another provided some emotional intensity to fight for survival.

There isn’t any combat to engage with while you’re skulking around the rig, with much of the gameplay favoring stealth or light puzzle/platforming encounters. Most if not all of the monsters you’ll find aboard the Beira rely on sound to track you, allowing you to throw various items as lures to clear a path. Outside of hiding under desks and low objects to elude danger, there’s also plenty of lockers to hide in, which I never really found myself needing to use that much seeing as there were plenty of easy ways to sneak past enemies. The enemy designs don’t have much variety between them, but with just how grotesque and surreal the ones we do get are, I’m not one to complain. 

The creature from the deep isn’t the only danger you’ll need to contend with, as the shoddily constructed rig you work aboard is deteriorating rapidly. There’s plenty of tense moments where you’ll need to navigate claustrophobic flooded passages, walk along thin platforms over thrashing waves, and operate dangerous machinery to keep moving forward. I really enjoyed this aspect of Still Wakes The Deep, as it felt like a relatively unexplored environment for a horror game. 

As mentioned previously, there are quite a few platforming sections, with underwater sections included as well. I’m not usually a fan of swimming in video games, but it is mostly serviceable here. If I had one complaint about the movement, it would be the hilariously slow sprint speed and slightly sluggish movement when submerged. Most of my time traversing the Beira however, was spent simply taking in the highly detailed and unexpectedly gorgeous environments. Sure the oil platform is mostly industrial, but it really felt like there was a lot of care put into making the levels feel connected with one another. 

It won’t take you long to reach the conclusion of Still Wakes The Deep, taking me just a little over four hours to roll the credits. While the ending itself didn’t exactly wrap things up narratively in a way that felt complete to me, the journey getting there was still enjoyable enough for me to recommend this to those looking for a horror experience with a unique setting. That isn’t to say there aren’t moments that hold some emotional value within them, but rather that the story doesn’t hold a lot of water outside of these small moments. Despite this, the struggle of Caz and the crew is a short voyage on the sea that is certainly worth signing up for.

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