Maid of Sker

Bought the game today and today i finished it also.
I dont remember the day when the game interested me this much, in a very long time, that i enjoyed it and beat it in like 2 sittings.
Amazing story and atmosphere and music. Just all amazing.
With crazy twist in the end. Just love the game.

“Old stories often turn out to be true” - Arthur Machen
I had a good time with this. It's a stealth-horror experience not miles away from Alien Isolation in terms of gameplay. You aren't really able to defend yourself from your foes - the middle section of the game gives you a gadget to stun enemies temporarily but you don't keep it forever. The interesting twist is that most enemies cannot see you at all, so you can be standing right next to them and they'll have no idea that you're there unless you make some noise. If you're a clumsy oaf and keep running around, banging into furniture and having coughing fits (our man coughs like he has tuberculosis every time he gets even a whiff of particles in the air) then things escalate quickly and you'll find yourself being chased around the hotel like a Welsh Benny Hill; if you take your time and hold your breath when needed you can ghost around the place almost completely unmolested. The setting is quite unique, with events taking place in an isolated location on the Welsh Coast and a new take on an ancient Greek myth providing the impetus driving events; these combine to create a folk horror atmosphere that is further facilitated by some nice character designs and decent graphics. I have to praise Wales Interactive for embracing and representing their locality; Wales is a little-used setting but as a fan of Arthur Machen I certainly appreciated the decision. The game actually reminded me of Machen in some ways - he wasn't one for action as such, but the modern-man-meets-mythology, science-and-commerce-vs-supernatural themes and the brooding Celtic setting certainly created a resonance for me. There are only a couple of jump scares, with the build-up and release of tension from evading the enemies favoured over loud noises and sudden startles. Though I've seen several complaints about bugs and performance issues I didn't encounter any myself. It's not a particularly long experience and you could complete it in 3 hours if you didn't care about missing detail or about 5 hours if you're very thorough, which for me was just about the right amount of time. Like horror fiction, I tend to think that horror games are best executed in short story or novella format, with any further increases in length risking overfamiliarity with the antagonist and a dilution of the horror. Some might complain about the price vs length ratio but from my perspective I did feel it was worth the money I spent buying a key on sale from the Humble Store - you can get it absurdly cheap if you're willing to be patient. Rounding off the package is the challenge mode, a later addition to the game in which you're given a bundle of firearms and have to escape the hotel by hunting keys and killing enemies. I didn't much care for it as I felt it drifted too far from what the core game stood for, but if you want to blow off some steam after all that sneaking it's certainly not horribly executed. I would recommend that you only play it after finishing the story as it might spoil some areas for you and from a gameplay perspective it'll benefit you to be familiar with the floorplan. Overall, I found it to be a competent and unusual sneaky horror experience that unites Soma-like gameplay with folk horror, mythology, and the careful exploration of A Quiet Place.

---{Story}---
☐ Doesnt have (Not counting historical stuff)
☐ Something isnt nothing I guess
☐ Not greatly told
☐ Average
☑️ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ Will make you cry or smile a lot
---{Gameplay}---
☐ Try not to get addicted
☑️ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Nothing special
☐ Ehh
☐ Bad
☐ Just dont
---{ Grind }---
☑️ Nothing
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☐ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ Insanity
---{Graphics}---
☐ You forget reality
☐ Masterpiece
☑️ Beautiful
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Will do
☐ Bad
☐ Awful
☐ Pixel art
---{Audio}---
☐ Eargasm
☑️ Very good
☐ Good
☐ Decent
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ Earrape
---{Audience}---
☐ Kids
☐ Teens
☑️ Adults
☐ Everyone
---{PC Requirements}---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☐ Potato
☐ Decent
☑️ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer
---{Difficulity}---
☐ Just press a bunch of buttons
☐ Easy
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☑️ Not so easy
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls
---{Game Time}---
☐ Long enough for a cup of tea
☑️ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ Depends on you
☐ Endless
---{Price}---
☐ Just buy it
☑️ Worth the price
☐ Wait for sale
☐ Maybe if you have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ Dont throw money into a rubbish bin
---{Bugs}---
☐ Never had any
☑️ Minor bugs
☐ Few bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ Ruining the game
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs
---{ ? / 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☐ 7
☑️ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

A competent indie survival-horror. Some people here described it as a walking sim in their reviews, and i sort of understand where they're coming from, but Maid of Sker is actually more akin to Resident Evil and Amnesia. Big gloomy manor with keys and items to collect, backtracking, secret rooms and secret passages, you know the deal. Unfortunately, it's very basic, there's only a handful of locked rooms and overly simple puzzles to solve. I really wish the progression, levels and puzzles were much more complex, but that's not a deal breaker.
What sets MoS apart is its main gimmick when it comes to stealth: enemies are blind and only rely on their ears to find you. Making any sort of noise is ill-advised, so you gotta walk slowly, and hold your breath if something makes you cough. A cool design choice for sure, but just like the rest, it's not perfect. Most of time you avoid your foes just like you would in any other similar game. But sometimes the approach gets more tricky, and that when it gets interesting. But it's still underexploited imo.
Engaging story, atmosphere and themes make that so-so game worth your time if you like horror.
N.B: do yourself a favour and disable TAA if you play this. It's horrendously implemented and makes everything blurry when you sprint or move.

"Don't panic, they'll only kill you."
haha that's a fun fact.
+ unique story.
+ not your typical screamers
+ main focus on the storyline
thanks for a night well spent

Maid of Sker is really two games, not one.

The first is an exploration mystery in which you try to rescue your beloved from a dastardly scheme of greed and murder. This mostly consists of working through levels which, although semi-open, are largely linear in practice. You look for the usual collectibles and lore, along with keys and McGuffins in the form of music sheets and cylinders. There are enemies scattered throughout, but the gameplay mostly depends on being patient and not getting too close to them. You have a means to heal, and one defensive mechanism in the form of a temporary stun device.

So would I call this survival horror? Not really. The enemies are your basic patrol AI, which become antagonistic if you bump a piece of furniture or run or breathe right next to them. But survival is pretty easy since apart from one miniboss, the enemy paths are regimented and so I never really felt the tension of trying to stay alive. I'd call this an exploration mystery game. It's fun, and lastly around 6 hrs, doesn't overstay its welcome. The best part of the Maid of Sker is the sound design, which is rich and very immersive.

The other game that is packaged in here is the Challenge section. I call it a whole other game for two reasons. First, the gameplay is fundamentally different. The enemy types are much more diverse and challenging, and you get weapons with which to kill them. So it's much more Resident Evil-esque. Second, there are four challenges each of which takes me about an hour for a single playthrough, and they involve navigating a reconfigured layout of the hotel to escape the labyrinthe. Each challenge enhances the difficulty, whether by having you play in the dark, fight only with a melee weapon, or get no lives (there are no saves on Challenges, so you have to do a challenge in one sitting).

In some ways, I'd say the Challenges are the more interesting game, thanks to the wider variation in enemy types and the more interesting final boss battle to escape. But truthfully both games are not varied or surprising enough to be worth the money on their own. Only together do I think they constitute enough interesting playtime.

Maid of Sker is a nice indie game for those looking for something atmospheric and tense without being particularly scary or intense. People looking for another Outlast or Visage should look elsewhere. I'd class this more in the same vein as The Vanishing of Ethan Carter or Perception or The Beast Inside. Enjoyable but don't expect too much.

While it is pretty tropey in the scheme of these (and I say this as someone whose own work is... well more so), it does almost everything right. The only issues we ever ran into was occasionally the AI was magical in finding you, but that happened once or twice over the course of the game. There were definitely a few frustrating points of the game, and the collectibles seem excessive at points. Otherwise though, the story was a pretty well done one, well acted and well done overall. The game controlled and played very well with only overtired minds having any difficulty. For people who don't normally like horror, my waifu and I still had a good time.