Fears to Fathom Series Review (PlayStation 5 & PC)

Fears to Fathom is a bit like a Stephen King novella: short, gripping, and laced in timeless horror tropes that make even the ficklest of tales feel like powerful interactive escapades with an intimate yet oftentimes uncomfortable touch. Although a lot shorter than a traditional VHS-powered walking simulator, each chapter in its series finds a way to fill a blank canvas with all sorts of provoking layers, with a mixture of B-movie pulp and a classic aesthetic that transforms even the feeblest attempts to create a masterpiece into compelling story-driven adventures that wax tradition and old-school slasher flick fodder.

If you’re unfamiliar with Fears to Fathom, then here’s what you need to know. First and foremost, the series—a timeline of chapters that frequent short, punchy, and original stories based on real experiences—is an episodic single-player psychological horror anthology in which you, as the protagonist of vastly different tales, enter a network of traditional corridors and classic thriller-like dioramas. A walking simulator at heart, Fears to Fathom invites you to spectate a series of events as a young character, or, more broadly speaking, as “the ones who survived” a terrifying encounter with an ungodly horror—a nighttime stalker, a horrifying entity, or a disturbing presence, for example.

Home Alone, which serves as the introductory chapter in the Fears to Fathom series, puts you in the shoes of a young teenager who, after finding himself alone in the absence of his parents, discovers that the comfort of a familiar home comes with a few caveats. As Miles, it falls on your shoulders to embrace the night and, through the right choices, survive. And for the most part, the broader field of Fears to Fathom follows in a similar fashion, with each episode taking place over the course of a single night—a stint that often transpires over a sixty-minute period.

To some extent, Fears to Fathom is like a digitalized, lightly edited version of a Creeptpasta story. In the beginning, you receive a slither of text—a backstory, if you will—and some context on the situation. From there, you take on the role of the narrator, after which you gradually experience the story as it’s written. In some cases, you find yourself following simple orders—cooking food, checking text messages, or exploring various rooms in a home or professional institute, for example. In other cases, you might find a spot of stealth-based content, or, more likely, a deadly encounter with a jump scare that amplifies your fear ever so slightly. Either way, Fears to Fathom isn’t a deep episodic series; it’s short, linear, and about as white-knuckled as indie horrors tend to come.

Fears to Fathom isn’t quite on the same page as a full-fledged survival horror, in that it keeps the what ifs to a bare minimum and, in an effort to keep it short and sweet, capitalizes on an experience that can be swept beneath the rug in a single sitting. It might not appeal to those looking to delve into a brilliant story with all sorts of twists, turns, and endings, though it does do a fantastic job of keeping you on tenterhooks for the short time it sticks around to spin a yarn. It’s just a shame that it isn’t, well, longer. But hey, at least it’s an episodic tale; it can always add new branches to the tree, so to speak.

Of course, Fears to Fathom doesn’t strive to reinvent the wheel of psychological horror with its simple and lightweight gameplay style. With little to no major action or puzzle-solving elements to ferry its stories, the series as a whole is rather straightforward and to the letter. And, again, this might not resonate with a solid portion of the demographic, given that it is, at least for the most part, a basic story-driven experience that favors brief spells of jump scares, light horror and suspense over lofty expectations. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a perfectly playable saga, only it doesn’t quite do anything special to invigorate the genre.

On the bright side, Fears to Fathom is an incredibly easy series to slip into and learn on the fly. Given the fact that each its chapters is mostly reliant on simple walking mechanics and exploration, it doesn’t exactly cost an arm and a leg to navigate. Moreover, as it doesn’t involve a lot of critical thinking or legwork, at no point do you ever need to think outside of the box to be able to overcome its obstacles. Frankly, as it’s an interactive story, all that you need to do is listen, react, and bare witness to the horrors that frequently leap out of your screen. Maybe that’s all that a horror needs in order to be successful. Fears to Fathom is clearly capable of proving that point, anyway.

With all of the above said, I can certainly see why Fears to Fathom is a cult hit among streamers. Given that it’s short enough to digest and littered with all of the classic pulp that often comes with any good old-fashioned indie horror saga, it honestly doesn’t take much to pick it up and romp through it. Could it be a better series? Probably. Though, it scratches an itch — and that alone counts for a lot.

Verdict

Fears to Fathom quite clearly has the potential to span an enormous timeline of anthological tales, with a firm grasp on the core strands that make B-movie pulp a universally beloved genre, and just enough original material to sew seamless episodic snippets into a brilliant tapestry of bone-chilling horror stories that can, and probably will appeal to the target demographic. Even though the series as a whole falls short on depth and longevity, it still remains a perfect solution for those who want to scratch an itch for brief sixty-minute intervals.

If you’ve yet to check out Fears to Fathom, then I’d suggest taking the time to experience it in its entirety. Although you can technically enjoy each chapter as its own self-contained story, I’d recommend taking it from the beginning, if only to see its evolution as a series. With that, you can thank us later.