Darkwood

Deadwood is the kind of horror that I manage to play: disturbing, eerie, strange and scary, while being interesting and playable at your own pace. The game eggs you on to learn its systems and explore its world, but also teaches you to fear the dark and that curiosity *did* kill the cat. The graphical style is great in how it shows things without giving excessive detail, letting your mind fill the gap. Sound design is phenomenal! The sound of your steps, the creaky floors and doors, each sudden startling noise, the guttural gurgling growls of the monsters lurking in the dark, the overwhelming sound of pouring rain covering everything else, the droning noises of otherworldly places. Everything makes its noise, and sound becomes a guide and a warning. Be immersed in the world and play with fear of death, you will be rewarded with a very surreal and exciting experience where daytime will start as a scary incognita but end up as the least of your worries. Fear the night...

Without overused mechanics, such as thirst/hunger bars found in similar titles sporting the same genre tag, Darkwood thrives by building a unique and interesting world that will terrify you. The story is told in a very non-handholdy manner, and as such it forces you out of your comfort zone by making you search thoroughly for limited resources in areas common sense dictates are extremely dangerous and risky. The combat is simple, yet satisfying enough thanks to well-crafted sprites and feedback. Sound design is where this title really shines: the audio, be it music or effects, really bring out those spine-chilling moments, especially when you've locked yourself inside a room at night and are left there trying to figure out which side of the hideout your enemies are wandering about in. Thanks to the limited field of view cone, the top-down perspective fits perfectly into making this a horror game without ever needing to rely on jump-scares. I can easily recommend this game to fans of Resident Evil 7, as despite the two looking quite different on the surface, they share a lot in common when it comes to things like ammo conservation, exploration, and storytelling that's not too intrusive. Overall Grade: 8/10

I bought this on Steam and now after months of pushing myself through the constant anxiety to finally beat it, I loved it so much I just wanted to add a review over here too. This truly is a cult classic, and easily my #1 favorite horror game ever. I'm a huge Silent Hill fan, and I think it should say something about the quality we are facing here. Of course no game can satisfy everyone, and I understand the problems some have had with it. This game does not hold your hand, and it tells you that right at the start. For a beginner the interface and controls may seem a bit confusing, especially under stress. For a good time I had no idea you can dodge enemy attacks, or that you can store items inside your workbench instead of just furniture (although the latter was so obvious I should have noticed it). What I'm saying is that if you instantly don't get the hang of it, you may lose your patience. I've seen some let's players desperately wandering through the woods for hours with no idea what to do or where to go, and only then realizing that they can check their journal (J) for notes and quests, as the game doesn't tell this by itself at any point. Fortunately the start is pretty tame, and you should get the grasp of it before shit gets real. The game has one of the most bizarre and intriguing stories you can interactively experience. Choices are sometimes so organically crafted that you won't even realize you are making one, and it may have unforeseen consequences. At one point I mistook a major NPC character for an enemy, and quickly tried to eliminate the threat. One fatal hit of my trusty shovel, and a sudden autosave. You can't load previous saves. I had fricked up big time. Never got to see what he had to offer. But there is so much content that no matter what, you are going to miss some on your first playthrough. Replaying is a different journey every time, assuming you have enough motivation and guts to go through the human torment again.

I've owned Darkwood for years and done multiple playthroughs. Everything about this game, everything, has such insane attention to detail and consistency. The dread is palpable. The survival is white-knuckled. The horror is traumatizing. And yet, many people still sleep on this game. You will never forget your first time with this game. You have not played a horror game before where the monsters casually decide to burn a meat sacrifice in your front yard at night. That image the first time I saw it was burned into my retinas, not because it was particularly grotesque, but because at that moment I was fully immersed in the hellish world of Darkwood. Probably one of the only things I don't like is that (and this is nitpicking) Darkwood has very barebones randomization on each playthrough, essentially just wiggling the map around and shifting a few locations around, while item spawns remain identical. The problem is that it's not random enough to make each playthrough feel fresh but it's just random enough to be annoying and prevent you from learning a route (which I'm sure was the intention). I would almost have preferred no randomization, as then I could have a different kind of pleasure memorizing the optimal speedrun route. If the devs had developed the randomization further to include items and enemy spawns, this could have given the game much more replayability and they still could have had a "default seed" for people playing the game the first time to get a consistent experience. Just a missed opportunity, especially because we never got any DLC :(.

There's not much to add beyond what has already been said; a game that can keep the tension high without cheap jumpscares would already have been a great accomplishment, but Darkwood goes above and beyond. Not only does it have impeccable gameplay with a mix of resource management and frantic, desperate combat but it also delivers a story and setting that inspire a dark, dismal fairytale feel, and gives you barely enough breadcrumbs to understand what's going on without resorting to pointless exposition. Your actions matter, but not always in the way you'd expect; characters are odd and otherworldy while being strangely relatable. And the feeling of defending your cabin from whatever goes bump in the night by any means necessary - from guns, to molotovs, to broken glass to just blocking a doorway with a wardrobe - is scarier and more tense than virtually every other horror game ever published.