When Still Wakes the Deep was announced last year, people responded positively to the first trailer. It revolves around a lonely oil rig where something terrible seems to happen, and we play as the seemingly sole survivor, a Scot named Kaz McCleary.
Just before Easter, I had the chance to see more of the game at an ID@Xbox demo with developer The Chinese Room, specifically with lead designer Rob McLachlan, who both talked about working on the game , and showed off about 15 minutes of gameplay. What I saw happened shortly after the disaster, but the team still won’t reveal what actually happened. It’s clear that Kaz ended up in the middle of something unexpected, and he’s very cold, which means he needs to warm up before he can start looking for his friends and other possible survivors. He made contact with another driller via the intercom, but he soon fell silent.
The lifeboats are on the doomed oil rig, but finding them isn’t easy.
He looked further and discovered that all phone lines to the mainland seemed to have been cut off, which was a big problem since the game was set in the 1970s, before the Internet and cell phones existed. This was an important aspect, as the developers explained that they wanted to recreate the atmosphere of horror movies of the 1970s and early 1980s, where the feeling of a lonely and vulnerable survivor dominated. The biggest source of inspiration is the classic The Thing, but Stanley Kubrick is also mentioned.
Here is an ad:
It’s obvious that the team really did their homework, and everything from the abandoned corridors with waves crashing against the windows to the smoky offices and canteens really emphasizes the era. I’m old enough myself to really remember the first half of the 80s and experience most of what I see with a pleasant sense of nostalgia. Incidentally, the Bella D oil rig is located off the coast of Scotland, and it was important for the developers to recreate the feel of a real oil rig from that era, and McLachlan said the team “gotten hard” on what the design would look like.
Whatever hit Bella D, it didn’t seem to be human.
In short, the design is top-notch, and it’s hard not to be impressed by the cold and claustrophobic conditions of a damaged oil rig during a storm. The soundscape seems peculiar too, with a constant, unpleasant squeak that makes it feel like everything could fall apart at any moment. On top of that, Still Wakes the Deep appears to be set around Christmas, which creates an almost perverse dynamic between the crew trying to make the sterile and lightly worn metal structure feel more festive and the sinister, deathly presence contrast.
But back to the adventure, our protagonist is now looking for his best friend Roy, who is a chef. Soon, he hears the voice of a co-worker named Trotz calling for help in a mysteriously radiated locked room, then the sound stops and Kaz realizes that the worst seems to have happened. The oil rig was large and contained various facilities, especially recreational facilities, and as Kaz walked around he would pass things like a pool table.
Here is an ad:
The main character, Kaz, has no weapons or special abilities, but he can swim.
The fact that Kaz is unarmed heightens the sense of vulnerability, and MacLachlan confirms that there are no weapons in the title. Therefore, you have no chance to protect yourself from possible threats. In fact, there aren’t any special abilities, and your only equipment is a helmet-mounted headlamp.
Although most of the damaged rigs appear to have been abandoned, I can already tell that the developers have managed to recreate the feeling that the protagonist is always being watched. Like the aforementioned The Thing, most of the creepy stuff is based on things you can’t see and don’t know, rather than something more concrete. Sure enough, the main character could see something and then quickly disappear, leaving me as a viewer with an unsettling feeling that what I was seeing might not be real at all.
The rig is being destroyed bit by bit, making it increasingly difficult to survive.
A wave of positivity washed over me as I reached the galley area and realized a staggering Roy was still alive after all. The two quickly hatched a plan to try to reach the lifeboat, Kaz clearing the way first. Oil rigs are taking a beating and will no doubt eventually sink, which means there’s an environment to be wary of in addition to possible enemies. In order to get out of the kitchen and find the lifeboat, Kaz had to crawl through the ventilation shaft. Shortly thereafter, a particularly unpleasant sight emerges, with bodies beaten and stuck to the walls and ceiling, blood splattering in some kind of gruesome art installation. I haven’t seen the monster yet, but whatever it is, it doesn’t seem to be human.
Prosperity! The silence was broken and the walls collapsed, when Kaz realized it seemed like some kind of organic monster had penetrated the structure. MacLachlan explains that we will die regularly, but also includes a simplified Story Mode where we can’t die for those who just want to experience the story without taking any risks. This approach will be derided by some, but it also broadens the potential audience.
The lifeboat journey continues for Caz, who revealed that there are few mini-game tasks to open doors or pry open ventilation ducts. Soon after, the speech ended in a huge laundry room, where a radio played the day’s weather forecast. Such an innocuous place felt eerily amidst the dim lights and widespread destruction, and talk of the weather was accompanied in an eerie way by a sense of life and death as a tangle of tentacle-like limbs quickly emerged from popping up from the ceiling.
Bella D is located somewhere near the Scottish coastline, and design, language, weather and other factors all contribute to creating an authentic feel.
I was curious about Still Wakes the Deep after its first presentation at the Xbox Games Showcase in June 2023, but after seeing more, the hype actually increased. It looks to offer some very atmospheric horror and I really appreciate how The Chinese Room strives to create a realistic environment, which is further enhanced by the fact that only Scottish voice actors appear to be used, which adds to the oil drilling The sense that the platform is actually located in a specific geographic area.
June 18th is the release date for PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, and it’s been brilliantly included in Game Pass from day one. If you are a fan of classic horror movies, especially The Thing, I really think you should keep your eyes and ears open, even though I do believe this is extra and unique for horror fans in general.
