The Thing meets being trapped on an oil platform. If that doesn't russle your jimmies, then the really good story, amazing visuals and honestly tense moments will. It's not a long game running in at 5 hours for me, but its one I believe you need to play. It's worth it.

Still Wakes the Deep follows the main character, "Caz", as he runs away from his past, to the ends of the Earth, onto a dreary oil rig in the North Sea. Navigate the rig, as a grim accident unfolds. Live vicariously through Caz, as he battles the supernatural and his own sanity.

I really enjoyed Still Wakes the Deep. I haven't worked on an oil rig, but I've heard endless personal stories. In fact, I had no idea there were oil drilling operations north of the UK. I'm not European, but I have Scottish heritage, and it turns out that I actually have familial ties to similar operations.


The game does an amazing job of capturing the feeling. Between the environment itself, and the genuine Scottish accents in the English voicing, it literally put a smile on my face. All the banter, the stories, etc. really sold it for me. Throughout the game, the voice acting was a mainstay. The passion & emotion in the dialogue is A grade.

The environment is highly detailed and (visually) expansive. From the start of the morning, between the dreary weather, and grandeur of the rig, to the evening, with the beautiful lighting & VFX from the stormy weather, to the end of the game, with all of the supernatural effects; it looks absolutely stunning. Even throughout the game, I found myself seeing little tiny details here and there. You can genuinely tell the developers put a lot of effort into this world.


Slight Spoiler Warning


As much as I enjoyed my experience, there really isn't that much going on. Still Wakes the Deep isn't a survival game, but there really isn't much in terms of gameplay, aside from the occasional "don't-fall-off-the-ladder" quick-time event, and a few sequences where you need to swim under something. The animations, experience, and ambience aren't bad; it's just not exactly... engaging.

At the start of the game, you have a little bit of free reign to explore around and talk to NPCs. As the game progresses, the gameplay areas become smaller and smaller, until the end, where you're basically just following an objective marker. I would have loved to see any sort of puzzle or interactions that persisted outside of what was immediately in front of me. Truthfully, it felt more like a movie than a game; I can't remember any part where I felt part in the experience.

Very Spoiler Warning


As the end of the game grows near, the story really takes a turn towards the obvious. There were multiple spots where the writers could've inserted twists or false hope or literally any plot device, but the story just steers towards the "inevitable".


I won't sugarcoat it; this game runs worse than a clogged toilet. With high specs, the game probably is alright. I played on Steam Deck at 720p, and it wasn't a good experience. The game is packed with several forms of TAA & AI upscaling. At such a low resolution, it was a blurry gross mess, to the point of being unplayable. Fortunately, turning all of them off (they don't make it easy) gave me no performance penalty (game is clearly majorly CPU bottlenecked.

I'll give credit where credit is due; the game is highly detailed. Most of the open areas ran at 24+ FPS (about what I would expect), yet some of the darkest, emptiest, most enclosed spaces dropped below 5 FPS, and my only option was to turn on AMD framegen (which did help!)

HDR was also a pain point for me. Maybe this is just a skill issue, but when I turned it on, the game became way too dark. No matter how high I cranked my brightness, the vibrant visuals just got blindingly brighter, but all other elements just stayed dark.

BUY ON SALE
Great voice acting and atmosphere
Very dated "gameplay"

£30 is pure robbery