Maid Of Sker review

3 years 9 months ago

A screenshot of an enemy in Maid Of Sker. His face fills the whole screen, having grabbed the player character by the throat. His face is covered by a mask made of a rough hemp sack. The shape of eyes and a mouth is suggested in the cloth, but there are no holes through which he can look or see.

Maid Of Sker

is a first-person survival horror game, which makes the name a bit confusing because it’s pronounced like “Made Of Scare”. Sadly, this isn’t a very good description of Maid Of Sker, because although there are some good and creepsome bits in it, this isn’t a game made for jump scare compilations on YouTube, nor it is suffused with a creeping, lingering dread.

Instead, it lands somewhere in between the weird keys and puzzles of Resident Evil, and the quiet, existential dread of something more like Soma, resulting a lot of waiting around as opposed to making you feel properly afraid – though the music and imaginative adaptation of a Welsh ghost story are both extremely well done. It might have done better leaning more into those aspects, perhaps, than towards straight horror.

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Author
Alice Bell