A big thanks to the hardworking folks over at Wales Interactive for allowing me the opportunity to try out their first-person horror game, Maid of Sker (pronounced Scar)!
In Maid of Sker, you play as Thomas, a songwriter, who goes to Hotel Sker to find his wife Elisabeth who is forced to be the new “Maid of Sker” after the original, her mother, died. After arriving, Thomas quickly learns that Elisabeth is being used as a tool in a cult ritual that needs her to sing in traditional Welsh Gaelic to appease something that Elisabeth’s family has kept secret.
Onto the game itself. The game heavily relies on sound as it’s suggested that you wear headphones or play with the volume high up. The only downside is there’s way too much ambiance noise, and the player’s footsteps get annoying pretty fast. The music is pretty good, especially the traditional Welsh ones, but at times the music is intense when there’s nothing going on, anyone who has played a horror game knows that when the music picks up, shit is getting real but in this case, it’s just the soundtrack running on auto.
The controls could use some tweaking, to be honest, you are able to play but the layout of the buttons and what they do don’t add up, like pressing the X button opens your inventory, in most games, it’s either a button on the D-pad or the menu button on the controller.
The enemies in this game, known as the quiet ones, are intimidating but it’s the one boss battle that really REALLY needs work. Without giving too much away, the one boss can see and hear you no matter where you are and comes right at you, and after you finally figure out how to defeat it, it does not really go away. So the new area you unlocked during the fight, or are able to go back to later in the game after finding certain keys that unlock certain doors, guess what, he’s there to ruin your day and insta kills you, meaning you really can’t explore these areas to find collectibles or notes.
Now with the negatives out of the way, let’s get to the good stuff. The voice acting is pretty good for a limited cast but I would have liked to have heard more from Thomas even though when you do communicate with Elisabeth over the telephones you’re given dialogue options but it would have been nice to hear Thomas saying the lines as well.
The art of the game is amazing. Overall it’s vibrant and colorful, even when it’s dark or in darker settings it’s still pleasant! The one mechanic of the game, holding your breath, is new and unique to me, holding your breath to help you stay quiet when enemies are near or not to alert them to your location (dusk and smoke make you cough in the game).
Overall gameplay is enjoyable once you understand the controls and the story is interesting adding to the mystery of what’s going on but with the ending of the game, it kind of leaves you scratching your head in slight disappointment and no fault to the writers of the game, some of the potential endings were hinted at too much at the beginning of the game that they were no real surprise when it happened.
Overall my experience with Maid of Sker was a mix of enjoyment and disappointment but heavily leaning towards enjoyable. With a playtime of around 4-5 hours, it’s nice for what I would call a “Rainy afternoon” game that you just play to pass time. Replayability is low for this as I feel it’s not really that rewarding or worth the hassle of trying to get past that boss character I mentioned before.
On my scale of 1-10, the art, story, traditional music, and the gameplay is balanced out by the odd sound mixing, bugged boss character, lackluster ending, odd control layout, and a short playtime. I’m not saying Maid of Sker is bad, it just needed some polishing up. For me, it’s a 7/10.
Maid of Sker is out now for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, and Steam.