Don’t Be Afraid 2 review

You’ll be hard pressed to find a horror title that does puzzles quite as well as Don’t Be Afraid 2. While it is genuinely unnerving at times, there are some incredibly well-orchestrated rooms filled with multiple ways to find keys, scour documents, and find missing items that take you from one room to the next. While it takes a methodical approach to its atmosphere building and terror, you’re never able to relax because you never know what is going to happen next.

Keeping your cool and trying to solve layered puzzles is something you have to get used to. Don’t Be Afraid 2 sees you try and escape various rooms of a house by finding answers everywhere. You play as David, someone who as a boy was tormented by two psychopaths by taking part in their evil games, now trying to live a life still tormented by those painful memories. He visits his therapist, takes his tablets, and does his best to forget. Unfortunately, the nightmare is far from over.

While you are often enshrouded in darkness, the visuals are fantastic. Every creepy doll and blood splatter fills you with dread. Rooms are dense, packed with various household objects as well as disturbing paraphernalia, and as you try and distinguish what is happening to you, you’re also having to use your brain to solve multiple environmental and symbolic puzzles, hunt down safe codes, find key items, and get the hell out of there.

Sometimes, you’ll struggle to find the right clue or that missing piece of the puzzle. Multiple times I missed that one important document that had a clue that set off a chain reaction to unlocking the door. Every room needs to be checked thoroughly, whether checking every drawer, behind every painting, scanning over every document, or behind nightstands and in dark corners. I was so impressed by how the developers have built such tension with such a slow approach to the horror.

When you think you might be safe, there are ways for all of your hard work to be undone through not following simple tasks. This was my biggest frustration, but I only made the mistake once. You have to keep your torch powered up by finding and inserting batteries when they’ve almost died or else you’ll be plunged into darkness. If this does happen, you’ll be attacked by an unknown entity and thrown straight back to the beginning, meaning every puzzle you’ve solved is reset and you head back to the start.

While it is incredibly frustrating, there are signs for when your torch is getting low, such as the light starts to flicker and dim. You can be attacked in other ways, but paying attention to each room and learning what needs to be done helps you to avoid death. Don’t Be Afraid 2 rewards your hard work, but it can also punish you for losing focus. Once you make your way through the different rooms and solve these wonderfully crafted puzzles, there’s a huge sense of satisfaction, especially as you approach the exit.

Don’t Be Afraid 2 gives you a monumental challenge that rewards all of your hard work. The puzzles are designed in clever ways, using almost everything in a room to find your means of escape. After a slow start, you start to find your rhythm and it becomes less of a chore scanning every room with a fine-tooth comb, with some great visuals despite spending a lot of your time in dark and dingy places. If you’re after a horror title that does something different while still telling a genuinely uncomfortable story, this one is for you.