The Floor Above Review (PC)

I’m buckled into the hot seat in a perpetual nightmare that can’t differentiate between hallucinations and reality. Sure enough, I can blink to shed light on the vaguest of heirlooms, but even these drowsy eyes can only illuminate the truth for a moment before the mucus and oil begin to associate fact with fiction. I have nowhere to go besides up. I have two buttons—a luminous green one that allows me to travel further, and a crimson red one that corresponds with the figment of my doubtful imagination. If I see that there is nothing out of the ordinary, then I hit the green. But if I blink, shutter, and strongly believe that there is an anomaly or a strange presence in the room, then I hit the red. It feels awfully straightforward. Yet, there’s a loop here that keeps knocking me back and making me question whether or not I’m progressing, or if I’m simply replaying the same nightmare over and over again whilst my conscious mind slips further and further into madness.

There’s only one room to analyze. However, with over a hundred different anomalies to discover, it often feels that even the smallest of chambers has a lot more layers to work with. I can complete the whole nine laps and ascend to the highest level, but it rarely ever feels as if I’m getting anywhere. A fresh strand on the mind-mapping board might unveil a new secret and provide me with additional insights into the story, but it still feels as if there’s too much left to unlock. To be frank, I haven’t the slightest clue as to how I found myself strapped into a chair, or even why these voices are beginning to pluck away at me and force me to question my own whereabouts. All I know is that there is more to this one room, and the only way for me to uncloak its deepest, darkest secrets is to keep pushing through the darkness—the perpetual loop, and the stacked anomalies that offer little to no comfort to me whatsoever.

The Floor Above sounds like your typical anomaly-hunting psychological horror, and to some extent, it is. Like those that have come before, it primarily involves combing over an area, spotting anomalies, and deciding whether or not to green light the next cycle, or to prevent a potential anomaly from halting your progress. It’s the same situation here, only with a blinking mechanic that can aid your quest and help you differentiate between anomalies and vivid hallucinations. Other than that, it’s the same basic concept: a room illuminates various objects and peculiar images, and a spectator—you—decides how to carve deeper into the blackness. It’s a simple idea, and frankly, one that almost anyone should be able to wrap their head around in less than five minutes or so.

While The Floor Above might not contribute to the co-existing spectrum of anomaly-based psychological horrors, it does add its own two cents to the mix with a unique blinking mechanic and a layered narrative that can provoke you into replaying the same cycle over and over again. It’s like a complete jigsaw puzzle without the four corners. Sure enough, you can see the image that it tries to capture, but you don’t feel as if it’s truly fit for the iris until the final pieces find their rightful places on the board. And I suppose it’s the same deal here, in that every loop feels like adding a new corner to the jigsaw. The problem is, you need a dozen or more pieces to fully assemble the puzzle.

See, with each cycle that you successfully complete (nine correct floors makes just one cycle) you unlock a fresh perspective on the protagonist’s journey. As you progress deeper into the cycles, you essentially scratch another layer from the overarching narrative, which in turn provides you with additional context to lather over the situation that you find yourself dealing with. It might sound incredibly simple—familiar, even—but with somewhere in the vicinity of 150 anomalies to detect, its mantelpiece room has more than enough to pique your imagination — even on the fifth, sixth, or seventh cycle, weirdly.

While the gameplay might be rather limited in scope and short of complex elements, The Floor Above does exhume some interesting elements and well-timed jump scares, as well as a range of endings and creative effects that exacerbate the claustrophobic atmosphere that it tries so desperately to shovel down your throat. I wouldn’t say that it’s a terrifying experience, but to give credit where it’s due, it does manage to keep you on your toes and forever second guessing your actions and the consequences. And honestly, that’s what any good anomaly hunting game should do. I can’t fault that here. It might not reinvent the wheel, but it sure as heck does enough to send shivers down your spine and keep your itchy trigger finger pulsating.

Verdict

The Floor Above might fall into the same perpetual cycle that befalls most anomaly-based psychological horror games on the market, but thanks to its inclusion of a blinking mechanic and hundreds of diverse anomalies and peculiar effects that elevate the claustrophobic essence, it still makes for a great time-squashing experience that can keep you combing over the fine details for hours. It might still feel like a spot-the-difference puzzler with familiar elements, but it’s still worth checking out, if only for the creative jump scares and dynamic hallucinatory moments.

If anomaly games like Exit 8 or Office After Hours are to your liking, then you have every reason to give The Floor Above some well-needed attention. Like those that have emerged from out of the blue in the past, it offers a simple-to-navigate gameplay experience that, while still reliant upon your stern eye for intricate details, is surprisingly easy to fall backwards into. And with a quality collection of peek-a-boo moments, anomalies and hallucinations to critique and mindlessly marvel at, clearly you have more than enough here to warrant a relatively small boarding fee.