The 23 finest PC video games you’ll be able to play proper now for 2024

Single-player or multiplayer: Single-player | Free to play: No

In Still Wakes the Deep, horror is available in a number of kinds. Eldritch creatures stalk the Beira D oil rig on skinny, too-long limbs that burst from their our bodies like snapping bungee cords. Human-sized pustules and bloody ribbons develop alongside the corridors, emitting a sickly cosmic glow. The North Sea is an unrelenting risk, wailing beneath each step. After which there’s the rig itself, a maze-like industrial platform supported by slender pressure legs in the midst of a raging ocean, groaning because it’s ripped other than the within.

Gameplay in Nonetheless Wakes the Deep is conventional first-person horror fare, executed with class and experience by The Chinese language Room. Its motion entails leaping throughout damaged platforms, balancing on ledges, working down corridors, climbing ladders, swimming via claustrophobic holes, and hiding from monsters in vents and lockers. There aren’t any weapons on the Beira D, and the protagonist has only a screwdriver to assist him break open locks and metallic panels, inserting the deal with pure survival reasonably than fight. The sport is absolutely voice acted and its crew members — most of them Scottish — are extremely charming, which solely makes the carnage extra disturbing as soon as the monsters board the rig.

Nonetheless Wakes the Deep is an on the spot horror traditional. It’s full of heart-pounding terror and laugh-out-loud dialogue, and all of it takes place in a setting that’s hardly ever explored in interactive media. Amid the sneaking, swimming, working and climbing, Nonetheless Wakes the Deep manages to inform a heartfelt story about relationships and sacrifice. — J.C.