Layers Of Fears looks a lot like a remaster of the first two games
I’m mostly afraid of spelling it wrong
Summer Game Fest just got scary with the announcement of psychological horror Layers Of Fears, the next instalment in Bloober Team’s jump-fest series that might really be a remaster, sort of? Bloober say it's the "psychedelic experience fans know and love" and has "an expanded plotline", so this doesn't sound like an entirely new game. The freshly revealed Layers Of Fears is being built in Unreal Engine 5. As such, the trailer makes for pleasantly unpleasant viewing.
Layers Of Fears is being co-developed by fellow Polish developers Anshar Studios, who’ve previously worked with Larian on Divinity: Original Sin 2 and Baldur’s Gate 3. The devs say this outing is “built upon the foundations” of Layers Of Fear, Layers Of Fear 2 and DLC pack Inheritance, which presumably means it’ll be keeping the jump scares and much talk of insanity from those. I can’t wait for the eventual remake of Layers Of Fears, Layers Ofs Fears. Sorry, Bloober Team.
What we thought might be called Layers Of Fear 3 was teased last year, so it’s been known for a while that Bloober were mucking about with the new Unreal Engine. Comments from Bloober Team’s CEO Piotr Babieno seem to indicate Layers Of Fears was originally meant to be a more straightforward next-gen rebundling of the first two games, but they've decided to meddle with the formula in some way. Babieno says:
“We are bringing back a franchise that is really special for us, in a new form that will give players a truly fresh gaming experience and that will shed new light on the overall story. Our plan was to recreate the games, but we didn’t want to make it a simple collection of two remastered games. We’ve worked out a new approach, something that is maybe not yet obvious. But I can tell you there’s a reason why we called it Layers of Fears.”
Bloober’s original Layers Of Fear, singular, released in 2016 and Adam thought it was more “a collection of spooky scrapbook clippings rather than a magnum opus”. Khee Hoon Chan felt similarly about the 2019 sequel in their Layers Of Fear 2 review. “It’s too fixated on traditional jump scares,” they said, “to embrace the twisted, palpitating gut of its story about a flawed protagonist and his struggles with inner demons."
Layers Of Fears is due out sometime in early 2023. It’ll be on Steam and the Epic Games Store, or PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X/S if you want to cower behind the sofa while playing instead.
Not E3 2022 is in full-swing - see everything in our E3 2022 hub, as well as our complete round-up of everything announced at Summer Game Fest 2022. Many more big game showcases and streams are still to come this summer, so make sure you stay up to date with our summer games stream schedule.