sprawling grounds to access new areas; there are safe
rooms where you manually save using a phonograph
(next to a typewriter). There’s even a relentless boss
who’s basically Mr X, were he to trade in his fedora for
a bowler hat. We could forgive this as homage, if the
source of Maid Of Sker’s horror – the monsters
themselves – were actually scary.
Good horror is often more about what you don’t see
than what you do; Maid Of Sker’s nasties are ever-
present, and less frightening for it. The scarecrow-
masked shamblers are attracted by sound, presenting
you with an imperative to keep quiet – but always
patrol set, reliable routes. They’re fast and deadly when
alerted, requiring you to constantly crouch and move
slowly, but while there’s tension in negotiating rooms
filled with them, the fear becomes diluted by their
predictability and drab, homogenous design. Eventually,
their presence is simply banal.
A handful of cutscene scares and set-piece moments
do give us chills, while Elisabeth’s plight, revealed
through phonograph recordings and telephones, is just
about engaging enough to urge us on to the game’s
branching denouements. Ultimately, though, the
derivative puzzling and repetitive grind of traversing
Sker House at an absolute snail’s pace makes Maid Of
Sker feel more like a crawling simulation than
a game that truly makes our skin crawl.D
éjà vu is an unsettling feeling, and one that’s
perfectly at home in a horror game. Maid Of Sker
doesn’t explicitly use it as a horror device, yet we
can’t escape the feeling that in spite of its compelling
narrative premise, which draws on Welsh folklore and
presents music as a powerful force for both good and
evil, we’ve played this game many times before.
Based loosely on the tale of a woman whose spirit is
said to haunt the real-world location of Sker House,
Maid Of Sker is less a ghost story than a rescue mission,
with the player infiltrating a monstrous cult in a remote
Victorian hotel. The game’s protagonist is summoned
there by his love, Elisabeth, who has asked him to
compose a piece of music that will help free her from
her deranged family’s clutches, and the ghouls
that roam the mansion’s Gothic halls. The game’s
goosebump-inducing setting and gripping story, penned
by Soma writer Ian Thomas, deserves better than its
reliance on survival-horror tropes – not to mention
puzzles so similar to those found in Resident Evil that
we expect to find a Jill sandwich half-eaten in the
hotel’s larder. Themed keys unlock matching doors;
replacing missing fragments of crests unlocks an
elevator; you backtrack repeatedly across the mansion’sPLAY
The ghouls that roam the creepy-looking Sker Hotel have particularly keen
hearing. Fortunately for you, there are plenty of sound sources that can be
used to lure them away, such as a system of servant bellsSILENCE IS GOLDEN
The Quiet Ones react to noise in
their vicinity, and keeping mum
is made trickier by clouds of
mysterious purple gas, smoke
from fires and dusty rooms that
cause you to cough. You can
hold your breath, visibly
covering your mouth, to pass
through these hazards, and also
to silence your breathing when
the creatures are too close. You
can use a steampunk device
called a phonic modulator to
stun them with pulses of sound
if you’re in a tight spot, but
ammo for this is scarce.Developer/publisher Wales Interactive
Format PC (tested), PS4, Switch,
Xbox One
Release Out nowMaid Of Sker
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