A flurry of new games, trailers, and exclusives impressed me at the Xbox Games Showcase, but Nothing Shaked Me Like Still Wakes the Deep. Developed by The Chinese Room, the sneak peek and gloomy cinematics displayed on stage ticked all of my boxes, and this game has already shot to the top of my most wanted list amid the current wave of survival horror intrigue.
This is the team behind Dear Esther, the walking simulator pioneer, and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, a similarly thoughtful, mysterious, and unsettling story. Following Frictional Games’ 2010 solo hit Amnesia: The Dark Descent, in 2013, the studio tried its hand at the horror genre with Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, and since then I’ve been dying for something just as dark and twisted. Although I can’t yet say whether Still Wakes the Deep will be exactly what I’ve been hoping for, I found myself muttering repeatedly under my breath throughout the entire 62-second trailer shown during Xbox Games Showcase 2023: “Please be horror, please be horror.”
The Chinese Room’s reveal trailer gave away little about the game, which is typical of their games generally. The first half of the short featured a camera moving across choppy seas, before focusing on the game’s oil rig setting through sea mist. A lone figure then appears inside the disused rig, fumbling around and falling off the helipad before landing on the platform below, clearly in disrepair. Seeing the world through their eyes, the protagonist scrambled through increasingly decrepit hallways and industrial spaces before a cliched (but appropriate) crescendo of strings marked the end of the trailer. After a high-pitched scream, the protagonist frantically slammed a heavy metal door against a bulkhead, despite it seeming obvious.
My stomach hit the roof as soon as I started playing this horror game. According to the press release after Xbox Games Showcase, here’s the official scoop:
Having been critically acclaimed for Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, and Dear Esther, The Chinese Room returns to the first-person horror genre in Still Wakes the Deep. You are an offshore oil rig worker, battling for his life through a vicious storm, perilous surroundings, and the dark, freezing North Sea waters. There are no lines of communication. No exits. There’s only one thing left to do: face the unimaginable horror.”
The survival horror genre is in the best position it has ever been in with the remake of Resident Evil 4, the remake of Dead Space, the Outlast Trials, the reboot of Alone in the Dark, and the remake of Silent Hill 2, just to name a few games flying the blood-spattered flag at the moment. Earlier this year, GamesRadar’s own Jasmine Gould-Wilson wrote about how horror has made a huge comeback, and it’s not just about nostalgia. There’s no doubt nostalgia plays a huge part in all of this, which is why I’m delighted The Chinese Room has turned its focus back to survival horror, but the current horror boom is mostly driven by great studios taking risks and doing what they do best.
Besides the fact that Still Wakes the Deep will be coming to PC, Xbox Series X, Xbox and PC Game Pass, and PS5, little else is known about The Chinese Room’s next game. Next year can’t come soon enough for me, and I’m already buzzing.
