Still Wakes the Deep

Still Wakes the Deep
Developer(s)	The Chinese Room
Publisher(s)	Secret Mode
Director(s)	Dan Pinchbeck John McCormack
Producer(s)	Bruno Julien
Designer(s)	Rob McLachlan
Programmer(s)	Louis Larsson-De Wet
Artist(s)	Laura Dodds John McCormack
Writer(s)	Dan Pinchbeck
Composer(s)	Jason Graves
Engine	Unreal Engine 5
Platform(s)	PlayStation 5 Windows Xbox Series X/S
Release	June 18, 2024
Genre(s)	Horror, walking simulator
Mode(s)	Single-player

Still Wakes the Deep is a horror video game developed by The Chinese Room and published by Secret Mode. The story follows an electrician who is trapped on a damaged oil drilling platform, having no way to escape while being pursued by mysterious monsters under harsh weather conditions. The game was released for Windows PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S on June 18, 2024.

Premise and gameplay

Still Wakes the Deep is a psychological horror video game played from a first-person perspective. The game is set in December 1975, on an oil rig named Beira D in the North Sea. In the game, the player assumes control of a Glaswegian electrician named Cameron “Caz” McLeary, who must navigate through the oil rig following a catastrophic event looking for a way to escape while surviving the harsh weather and evading the pursuit of creatures. The player character can run, jump and climb ladders. However, the game does not have a combat system, and players have to rely on stealth and solving light environmental puzzles to progress.

Plot

Cameron "Caz" McLeary, a married man with two daughters, is on the run from the Scottish police for a violent altercation with a man named Billy Chamberlain. To avoid prison and risk his wife Suze and their kids losing their flat, Caz gets help from his best friend Roy, a cook on the Beira D oil rig. Despite no prior knowledge or experience in the oil industry, they hire him as an electrician; Caz hopes that the time away will let the situation cool down and he can convince Billy to drop the charges. Leaving for the job and running from the law strains Caz's marriage; he later receives a letter from Suze hinting at divorce. The Beira D is also poorly constructed and rife with issues, while its boss, Rennick, is unpopular, careless, and hot-headed. With Roy's support, Caz helps keep the rig operational along with his coworkers Finlay, Brodie, and others.

After finding out about Caz's incident, Rennick angrily fires him. However, before he can board a helicopter to the mainland, a drilling attempt despite issues with the apparatus shakes the facility, with Caz and several men falling into the sea. Only Caz, near-dead from hypothermia, is rescued. Once he recovers, he discovers the situation has deteriorated: the rig is beginning to fall apart, while mysterious masses of tendrils resembling blood vessels begin infesting the lower sections. Worse still, numerous coworkers, having come into contact with contaminated oil, have become mutated creatures with tendrils and are hunting the rest of the crew. Sneaking around, Caz finds Roy in the kitchen and attempts to secure the lifeboats, but poor construction renders them lost.

Rennick orders an evacuation by helicopter, but he flies away without waiting and the chopper crashes into the rig. With the Beira D on its last legs, Brodie, Finlay, and Caz work together to maintain power, keep the rig from falling over, and prevent a gas explosion when the gas flare tower fails, all while being hunted by Rennick, who has become one of the creatures. Caz goes to rescue Roy, only to find him dead from diabetic ketoacidosis from having gone too long without insulin. After Brodie sacrifices himself to float the rig, a despondent Finlay snaps and attempts to blow up the platform, but is crushed by falling machinery. Before dying, Finlay convinces Caz to do it: the infestation has overtaken the rig and cannot be allowed to spread to the mainland. Wanting to save his family and avenge his friends, Caz ignites the Beira D, destroying everything on it; his last moments are reliving memories of meeting Suze and the birth of their children.

In Scotland, Suze writes a new letter to Caz, resolving to persevere in their marriage and wishing for him and Roy to come home.

Development

Development of Still Wakes the Deep was led by The Chinese Room, the studio behind Dear Esther, Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, and Everybody's Gone to the Rapture. The concept was created by the studio's co-founder, Dan Pinchbeck, who directed the game until his departure in mid-2023. John McCormack, the game's art director, was then promoted to replace Pinchbeck. "The Thing set on an oil rig" was the game's original pitch, while Who Goes There? inspired the overall atmosphere of the game. The team believed that the setting, which sees a group of professionals stranded in a remote place with no outside connections, provided an excellent venue for character drama. An oil rig was chosen to be the game's setting because it provided opportunities to explore various types of fears such as "vertigo, drowning, claustrophobia". A wide range of films, such as Annihilation, Midsommar, The Southern Reach Trilogy, Sapphire & Steel, and Suspiria all influenced the game.

As the game is set in Scotland, the team used the opportunities to include voices not commonly represented in games set in the United Kingdom. Voice actors from Isle of Skye, Dundee, Aberdeen and Glasgow were recruited. The team spent an extensive amount of time interviewing people who used to work on an oil rig, and viewed British Petroleum's documentary archives to ensure that the oil rig presented in the game was authentic and period-accurate. McCormack, who is a Scot himself, advised the team on the aesthetic of Scotland in the 1970s. Abigail's Party, Scarfolk Council, Don't Look Now and Rosemary's Baby were cited as inspirations for the game's overall look, which was intended to be "unnerving" and "unsettling" despite its initial innocuous presentation. The Poseidon Adventure was cited as a major inspiration for the team, and the team wanted players to "fear the waves, and to feel trapped above the cold dark water as it floods the rig". The team also wanted to capture the feeling of "dreich", a Scottish word representing grey and gloomy weather, one that "has taken all the colour and joy out of the surroundings".

The game does not have a combat system, and the team emphasized that the player character is not an action hero. Reverend Frank Scott from The Posideon Adventure was described as the "perfect archetype" to McLeary, the game's "unathletic" main character. This is an intentional choice to make players feel "powerless", so that every decision made by players will feel impactful. Puzzle solving and traversal, therefore, become the main ways for players to progress. Early sections of the game focused on knowing the oil rig crew. This section of the game was inspired by the works of Ken Loach. These sections were used to juxtapose with the game's later parts which focus more on horror and action. Players sometimes have to backtrack to certain areas of the game, though they will be changed as they are either destroyed or flooded, potentially opening up new areas for players to explore.

Still Wakes the Deep was announced in June 2023 by The Chinese Room. It was released on June 18, 2024 for Windows PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and Series S. The Chinese Room and publisher Secret Mode partnered with Microsoft to promote the game, which will also be released for Xbox Game Pass subscribers at launch.

External links

• Official website