Explore a hotel filled with dangerous foes and numerous puzzles as you search for the way to banish the darkness that has overtaken the hotel and its inhabitants.
Maid of Sker
Developer: Wales Interactive
Price: $25
Platforms: PC (reviewed), PS4, Xbox One
MonsterVine was provided with a PC code for review.
Maid of Sker begins with a man named Thomas traveling to an isolated hotel after being called there through an urgent letter from the woman he loves, Elizabeth, asking him to compose a song and then hurry to her side to banish the darkness that has overtaken the hotel. Indeed, when Thomas arrives he discovers that Elizabeth is in hiding while her family and the hotel’s staff roam the building as deadly, monstrous foes.
The story is loosely based on the Welsh legend of Sker House, a historic building said to be haunted by the ghost of a woman named Elizabeth Williams, who was locked in a room to prevent her from running away with her lover. It draws upon this legend and Welsh folklore, although you can easily enjoy Maid of Sker without knowledge of either.
It is a first-person horror game that tasks you with searching the hotel for the musical cylinders Elizabeth says are the key to freeing the hotel from its curse. From the moment you enter the hotel itself, the gameplay structure feels reminiscent of classic survival horror games. Many doors are locked, and you must search through areas you can access to find keys and solve puzzles in order to proceed. Despite this, it is a fairly guided experience, with few moments where you have reason to backtrack until near the end. You generally will explore one floor of the hotel, solve the puzzles needed to open up the next section, and then move on. The puzzles are fairly straightforward, with any necessary clues located nearby, aside from one puzzle that I finally just solved through trial and error. There is one early section that is almost completely linear, but fortunately, most of the game is not like that.
Stealth is also an important part of the gameplay. While there is one defensive weapon you get partway through the game, its uses are limited and should be saved for the moments when you most need them. Instead, you’ll need to carefully creep around the hotel to avoid the patrolling enemies–and I do mean carefully. The enemies are blind, but they are highly sensitive to noise. Bumping into furniture, not being cautious about the sound of your footsteps, or even breathing too loudly can easily alert an enemy. You can hold your breath for a brief period of time, and this is critical to sneaking around undetected, especially if you’re near dust or smoke that might make Thomas break into a fit of coughing.
Fortunately, you can take a few hits before you go down and there are healing items that can restore your health if you run into trouble. These are scarce enough that you want to conserve them as much as possible, however, and so you really want to do your best to avoid being spotted. The basic enemies aren’t particularly scary, which makes the primary fear more a fear of losing progress than of the enemies themselves, since you can only save at phonographs located throughout the hotel, but that doesn’t stop it from being a tense experience.
The excellent sound design contributes to that. From the beautiful melodies that are at the heart of Maid of Sker to the overall audio in the hotel, this is where the game really excels. Many times I found myself freezing in response to small sounds and listening intently to try to tell where enemy footsteps were coming from, not to mention worrying that my own footsteps were too loud and would bring an enemy racing toward me. Sound is a key part of both the story and gameplay and every aspect of it works quite well.
As you explore, there are a few basic ways the story unfolds beyond the few scripted sections and cutscenes. Elizabeth will call you on a handful of phones throughout the hotel and give you updates on her situation, while you respond by choosing Thomas’s dialogue. The phonographs that serve as save points also play recorded messages that give you a glimpse of Elizabeth’s activities ahead of your arrival. Finally, notes and documents further expand on the story and especially the backstory that led to this point.
The story is interesting enough to push the gameplay along and has some great moments as you learn more about past events, and it comes to a satisfactory conclusion aided by its wonderful music. There are two endings, determined by a choice you make at the very end, although you’ll need certain key items for the endings as well. Since you can reload your final save to see the other ending, that doesn’t create much replayability, so the 6-hour playtime of Maid of Sker might deter some players. However, there are collectibles and multiple difficulty settings–including one that restricts you to only a handful of saves throughout the game–that might encourage fans to play again.
The Final Word
Maid of Sker might not be the scariest horror game out there, but the tense moments, sound-based gameplay design, and intriguing story come together to form a solid horror experience nevertheless.
– MonsterVine Rating: 4 out of 5 – Good
