Layers of Fear - Inheritance - Game Review

On the other hand, the controls are more or less the same, but the puzzles are drastically different. All the challenges in the game seem to be far more straightforward than in the original story, while the attitude of the protagonist seems to be overall more composed, as though she’s accustomed to metamorphosing objects and seeing buried memories manifesting themselves in a physical slideshow before her eyes. In one of the puzzles, the gameplay resorts to conventional survival horror tactics, namely being chased by a monster, which in that case is merely a 2D wolf in a child’s bedroom story. 

Although there aren’t checkpoints or an easel upon which you witness an empty canvas transform into a magnum opus as you make progress in the storyline, you can easily tell when you have achieved a milestone in the game. Every now and then, a memory plays out, usually displaying the abuse and maddening screams of the protagonist’s father. However, if a player chooses the father route, the painter’s abuse is shown in a different light – more so as agony and mental illness. On the other hand, the abusive father shows controlling behavior is quite subtle ways. In one displayed memory, we see him lovingly guiding his daughter through the basics of painting, but upon seeing her drawing he scoffs, “Why pink?”  

There are implications that the conventionally beautiful mother has suffered burns to her face that have left her deformed. After completing one of the puzzles as a younger version of the protagonist, the father finishes a portrait of his wife, which is displayed in memory. Depending on the choices made and the routes are chosen, the artist either paints his spouse as disturbingly misshapen or as though she looked exactly the same as when he first married her. This gives players a clue on where they’re headed with their game progress. 

While the father route dissolves the protagonist’s bitterness and makes her see her father from a more mature and understanding perspective, the mothering path reveals the infamous painter to be a demented sociopath who wouldn’t think twice about harming his own loved ones for the sake of finishing his masterpieces. However, neither of the two biased endings are fully satisfying. Even when the daughter chooses to come into terms with her father’s abuse, she becomes oblivious to the madness that supposedly runs in her family. In one of the endings, we see her tutoring her young child how to paint, just as her own father did with her. And upon seeing the child’s drawing, she asks, “Why pink?” which of course, rings a bell and foreshadows her fate. 

However, the ideal ending is not an easy one to achieve, seeing as it requires all collectibles to be in the protagonist’s inventory before reaching the final destination. It also requires an observant eye that figures out where the father’s painting room is hidden. In the more satisfying ending, the daughter repeats what was in the premise, “I was once told that insanity runs in my family,” and adds, “Let it run.” Coming into terms with the family curse seems to be the only logical conclusion to the story, but it’s one that hits too close to home with many a mentally ill artist. This perhaps alludes to masterminds such as Vincent Van Gogh, who was also notorious for employing gore into one of his paintings to perfect a masterpiece, making the narrative far more realistic than any shape-shifting nightstands and slamming doors would initially imply.