"The player should feel like they are almost always about to die but never do." This is what the lead developer, Rob McLachlan, told me after I'd finished playing through the first third of the upcoming single-player horror game Still Wakes the Deep. Almost a week later, I'm still thinking about how brilliantly accurate that statement is.
Working on an oil rig off the coast of Scotland seems unnerving enough, the developers even told me that they couldn't get access to a rig due to the strict training that's needed, which includes being dunked into the North Sea to prove that you could survive a fall into the frosty ocean. But The Chinese Room doesn't use this fantastic setting as just some horror gimmick. Instead, it's clear the devs have worked hard to springboard off this isolated location, using it to terrorise players in some really creative ways.
