Creaks
Developer/publisher Amanita Design
Format PC (tested), PS4, Switch, Xbox One
Release Out now
The eyes have it. They might be little more than two large white orbs with black dots for pupils, but the windows to the soul of Creaks’ protagonist have been flung wide open. Within them we see a mix of curiosity, anxiety and wonder; perhaps just a hint of paranoia, too. That he seems unwilling to close them is understandable: the world he tiptoes through seems to have this young man under its own watchful gaze at all times. And, well, he’s in an Amanita Design game. There is, as always, a heck of lot to take in.
More, even, than we’re takes place within a Daedalian architectural folly, constructed with no thought for convenience whatsoever. Even without the interventions of a colossal beast – whose periodic intrusions rattle the rafters, sending sooty dust cascading from the ceiling as walls and floors crumble under the weight of its talons – it would be a mess. To call it a mansion suggests a degree of order and structure that’s entirely lacking here: rooms are haphazardly piled on top of one another, connected by narrow crawlspaces and an network of ladders and mechanical lifts. The whole place makes the Finch house look like a two-up two-down.
