Epic continues to frisbee out the free games, as backlogs around the globe grow so unwieldy they’re liable to topple over and squish their owners flat. But should you be willing to risk your chances against Death itself, then, hey, why not add Observer and Alan Wake’s American Nightmare to your library later today?
Both games, of course, paddle in the wading pool of blood that is the horror genre (appropriately enough, given the season), with Bloober Team’s Observer taking the surreal sci-fi approach, while Alan Wake’s American Nightmare offers up a Twilight-Zone-inspired slice of small-town terror. They’re both good!
Observer time-travels players to 2084, and a dilapidated apartment building in a dystopian version of Kraków, Poland. Here, they take on the role of Daniel Lazarski (voiced by Rutger Hauer), a so-called Observer detective attempting to track down his estranged son.
Observer Launch Trailer Watch on YouTube
Half the game is a wonderfully atmospheric and deliberately slow-paced mood piece, focussed on meticulous investigation as players roam the mouldering apartment block for clues, questioning its strange procession of tenants from the other side of their closed doors. The other half though sees Bloober returning to the sort of electrifying, disorientating set-pieces that served Layers of Fear’s haunted house horror so well, plunging players into visually astonishing dreamscapes, as they hack into suspects’ brains to relive their memories.