Stay alive
The very name of survival / horror involves the combination of these two mechanic, but still, in most cases we are talking about the games in the spirit of Resident Evil and Silent Hill with certain variations, but the actual “survayval” represented a crowd of about the same project about a permanent “kraft” and search for resources.
So, Darkwood perfect fit in that formulation – survival / horror. On the one hand, it really is survival. And the game looks like a typical indie this direction of Steam: view from above, old-fashioned graphics, the constant search for resources and ‘kraft’. In the story, we are trapped in a strange, dark and scary forest, where we have to somehow get out.
Classic formula. Day exploring the location, drag it to your inventory everything that you can carry off (a pocket is not dimensionless), communicate with rare characters counter and trade with them. And when it gets dark, we must with all haste to rush to the nearest shelter, close all doors and windows, cabinets block passages and praying that God gave through the night.
Because at dusk procedurally generated wood that in daylight while the day tries to kill you (the hero attack deer, dogs, and even poisonous mushrooms, stepping on that you can earn poisoning), even flies with coils – there are all sorts of monsters, savages, ghosts, banshees and other monsters, as if woven from the darkness. And they may well pay a visit to visit you …
Therefore it is better to pre-day build barricades or repair in the shelter, to fill gasoline generator, comprising light to set traps at the slots. However, much more to save the country the gas coming from the furnace, which is in every house – it is a time keeps evil.
There, on the stove, you need to prepare the injection of special mushrooms, giving the hero a new “perks” such as the ability to see farther. True, this will have to choose and some negative effect.
The refuge is also a bench where you can not only produce, but also to repair and improve things. If it “upgrade”, it opens access to more cool drawings. While some things like torches, bandages and skeleton keys allow tinkering and on the move, without a workbench.
I did not come out of the woods …
However, the words “dark wood and terrible” in this case, not empty and no background, which serves to justify all this quite typical (except for the gas and the furnace) survival-mechanics. There really dark and scary, and you are constantly on their toes. An early version of it was enhanced and permanent character death. In the final it does not have – fallen hero reborn in his refuge, losing part of things. But hardly from it becomes less frightening and stressful.
The authors did a great job with the sound – you have all the time irritate some whispers, cries, rustling frightening and dark ambient. Darkness at times felt almost physically, and monsters and opposing characters look scary, crazy and disgusting – somebody in the hood with the face of the wolf, a strange man in a gas mask …
You can come across an abandoned camp with corpses, a strange area where the outlines are beginning to change, at the ruined church where the ghosts surround and whispered, “Dance with me” … And there, in the house, a man sits, methodically beating his head on the table and also repeats some strange words. Naturally, he will attack soon turned black monster.
Some NPC communicate with us and even pose some challenges, promising to help get out of here – to find something to get to a certain location, and so on. The process will have to not only collect, master, hide and fight, using homemade cold or firearms, but also look for passwords of locks and doors.
The farther into the forest, the darker and infernal all around – there are more dangerous enemies, reality and illusion into one another, the boundaries are erased, the darkness surrounds thickens madness grows, Hough shaking … But you find more and more information about that here It is going on, and even get the opportunity to influence events.
Despite the name, Darkwood stands out against the background of games of survival and the search for resources. And it is hardly a typical “vyzhivalkoy” – in front of us and atmospheric hardcore horror, in which elements of the “bagel” and survival-mechanics are not an end but a means of creating suspense, so how can intimidate players stronger.
Pros: here it is really creepy and scary and the forest and coming out of the darkness is felt as real, tangible enemies; eerie sounds; general feeling of constant tension and fear; solid game mechanics at the junction of “bagel”, and survival horror.
