Maid of Sker impressed me and disappointed me at the same time. This is an increasingly common feeling when dealing with these smaller indie games nowadays. Either they have good ideas with poor execution, or great execution of poor ideas. They never seem to hit on all cylinders. I guess this should have been expected, as Maid of Sker didn’t exactly get rave reviews when it came out.
Maid of Sker is average. It’s a hide-and-seek walking simulator that really, really wants to be a Resident Evil game. In fact, it’s very much a Resident Evil game, if RE didn’t have any combat and really lame enemies. Multiple locked doors that require specific keys, simple lever puzzles, save rooms, and an elaborate mansion (okay, “hotel”) complete with trap doors and secret passages. The Resident Evil homages abound, and honestly, those similarities are what kept me playing.
The graphics are very well done, the mansion (sorry, “hotel”) is extremely detailed and creepy, and the music is moody and dark. It was a true joy to explore the area, even if it didn’t get quite as ridiculous or “out there” as RE usually does. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; RE can get pretty fuckin’ silly sometimes.
The gameplay in Maid of Sker sucks though. It just does. The main character cannot physically defend himself. At all. The monsters are apparently blind and can only react to sound. We’ve all played games with this mechanic before, so you’ll understand my frustration when I realized I couldn’t throw objects to distract the enemy, I couldn’t use ambient noise to my advantage, and I couldn’t do anything to dissuade them from walk straight toward me if I were trapped in a corner. All I could do was wait to see if it got close enough.
It would be understandable if these monsters were formidable, scary creatures. Like in A Quiet Place, if you made a sound, you were done. And there was very little you could do to stop it. But in Maid of Sker, they’re just… people. And they attack you with their fists. Fists. Now c’mon, the game takes place in the 1800’s. Literally everything you come across is either glass or metal, and you’re telling me this guy can’t find anything to defend himself with? At all? No fireplace pokers, no axes (there seems to be plenty of firewood, gotta be an ax somewhere), nothing? A ball-peen hammer? A fucking brick? I don’t know about anyone else, but if my life is literally at stake, I’m arming myself with anything I can find. ANYTHING.
The character does come across a device, an orb that emits a sound that hurts the creatures and stuns them long enough for him to get away. This device uses small fuse-like “ammo” charges that you find laying around. I never really needed it. I think I used it once to get out of a jam. I guess if you suck at gaming, you might need it more, but honestly, the monsters are all on pre-set paths and pretty predictable. Thus they were never really all that intimidating or scary.
The sound mechanic wouldn’t have been so bad if they take one ten-minute gameplay gimmick and stretched it out over several hours. The game never deviates from this formula. It plays with it a little bit to be fair, but some of the later moments get a little annoying after you’ve been playing Marco Polo for a few hours only to be confronted with something that psychically knows where you are no matter what. I won’t spoil that for you but needless to say, it flies in the face of all the logic the game has taught you so far.
Speaking of logic, the game turns it off and on at will. Whenever the main character’s girlfriend, the “Maid” needs to contact him, she’ll call a service phone nearby, which rings loudly, to the complete ignorance of the monsters that react to fucking sound. I’ve stood and talked on that phone with a monster patrolling dangerously close. But because I was in a cutscene of sorts, none of the sound coming from the phone (cuz I mean, they’re “talking” to each other) is registered by the creature. You’re completely safe inside the booth.
They also don’t seem to react to each others’ noise, either. How does one monster know that those footsteps are mine and not the other monster’s? Do they walk different? Why aren’t they just beating the shit out of each other all the time? Why don’t they attack anything else that makes noise? I can understand in a quiet room, but outside?
I’m assuming the developers didn’t have the budget to figure out monster A.I. and that pre-programmed paths and sound triggers was the easiest way to go. And that’s fine I guess, at least the game is only a few hours long. But I think I would have rather this game have been a straight up walking sim with puzzle elements and zero combat/monster encounters, or maybe just a few scripted moments than the boring sneak-fest that takes up the entire game. I beat this game in four and a half hours, but I think it would have been more like two if I wasn’t walking super slow most of the time, to avoid making too much noise.
I’m not going to say “don’t play this game,” but it’s hard to recommend. It’s fine. It’s just not terribly exciting. The real shame is that the story has potential, but I think it was a story for a different game. I love the idea of the siren’s song. It has a very “pirates of the caribbean” feel to it. Very nautical. I love that shit. I just don’t think the game’s setting makes the most of it. The story revolves around shipwrecks, and mentions them multiple times. I was expecting to explore an old shipwreck, but alas it never came to be, and that was really disappointing.
I guess I still have to rely on Lego Pirates of the Caribbean to get my fix.
