A circus and traumatic experience should go hand in hand with horror, right? Well if done right yes. But then there’s Daedalic Entertainment and Pixlesplit’s first-person psychological horror REVEIL.
REVEIL follows a circus handyman by the name of Walter as he’s constantly waking up in his house but finding himself still in a dreamlike world that keeps taking him back to the circus where he and his circus performer wife and daughter work.
When it comes to the game’s controls, the layout is…wired, there’s no other way to say it. The controls don’t feel natural and I found myself most of the time messing up. The voice acting for the game is good but the soundtrack gets annoying with the droning sound effects used in songs that are reminiscent of another game (I’ll get to that shortly).
The gameplay for REVEIL is what you would expect in a game like this, you walk around, solve a puzzle to advance, and have the scenery change by simply turning around, and at many points, our game’s hero does not question any of it.
I have two major gripes about this game: one being that almost from the start I have already figured out what the horrible thing is that will be the twist in the story. There are way too many hints as you start to play. The second major gripe I have with REVEIL is that it’s just another clone of Layers of Fear (which in itself is a clone of P.T.)! There are so many similarities between the two that this game comes across as fan fiction and lacks originality, all they did was change the setting but the story at its core is relatively the same as Layers of Fear.
In the end, REVEIL had potential but unfortunately played it safe by following an already-written formula. If Laters of Fear clones are your thing, check this out, but if you want something similar but different, look elsewhere. On my scale of 1-10, REVEIL is a 6/10.
REVEIL comes out March 6th 2024 for PlayStation 5, PC, and Xbox Series X/S.
