Layers of Fear: Inheritance (PC) Review

Layers of Fear: Inheritance tells the story of the daughter of the core title's protagonist, who, much like her father, she too suffers bouts of delirium and madness. Many years after the previous events, she returns to her childhood home to set things right. The majority of the game is about exploring the house and receiving random bits of information through flashbacks. By and large, the gameplay is identical to the core product, though the daughter seems less prone to hallucinations than her father. Also, her story is much more interesting and much more terrifying.

There's something profound hidden here: a story of child abuse and watching the one who was supposed to protect you slowly crumble under the weight of their own madness. This still relies almost exclusively on jump scares, though they are much less frequent. Instead, this is much more unsettling, feeling it's slowly moving its fingers under your skin, before biting down its massive teeth. It's an excellent display of restraint, especially when the story gets very upsetting as it moves on. Everything experienced technically happened to a child, and is still happening to her as an adult - except now it's all in her mind, repeated ad nauseam until she finds a way to silence it.

The fact is that Inheritance accomplishes what the core game failed to. While the whole experience is about exploring the space and hearing the story, it's now easier to empathize. Player's aren't venturing into the mind of a man obsessed with perfection, but a child suffering from that obsession. While the voice acting is still cringe-worthy from time to time, the essence of this tale is much more intact. Even the very look of the house shows the dysfunction and chaos in its most absolute. The broken down shutters, destroyed paintings, and cryptic disarray, are a reminder something happened here. While the original fills those pieces in where the DLC does not, one thing is clear. Whatever happened here was very, very bad.