DARQ: Complete Edition

In this creepy, atmospheric game you spend most of your time solving varied puzzles that operate on dream logic, with stealth and chase elements sprinkled throughout. It's all rather well handled. I wish that you could save your game during the individual chapters, but this is apparently something that the developer has expressed that he regrets it and will try to do better in the future so it's great that he listened to feedback. And since there are no randomized elements in this, if you have to stop playing before completing the level you're playing, you can recreate what you did quicker, provided you remember the solutions. And if you die during a level, it does not force you to replay very much. I think there's one part where you may have to do two, almost three minutes if you don't quite complete it, but frequently it's less than one minute and you can almost always tell why stealth or a chase failed, and how to succeed on the next try.

Although I don't think any game will top Limbo's perfection as a puzzle platformer, or Little Nightmare's macbre and suggestive imagery, Darq is about the closest thing I've seen to a successor to both games. The artwork is splendid. It features fully 3-D artwork with an incredible amount of detail and creepiness, coupled with a bone-jarring sound design. But where the game really shines is deploying a very clever mechanic to produce some fairly tricky puzzles. Essentially, the game leves are constructed in a kind of rubix-cub fashion, such that you spin rooms in various ways to complete objectives and solve puzzles. It works incredibly well. Like other reviewers here, I found the difficulty level for the original seven chapters, and the Tower, to be just right -- challenging, but I usually could solve my way out of it in a few minutes. The Crypt, on the other hand, wicked difficult, in part from the geometry of the level and in part because the puzzles themselves are at an extra level of difficulty. Thoroughly enjoyable tho. It's a short game. The first seven levels and the Tower took me about 2.5 hrs. Your mileage will vary on the Crypt depending on how fast you can figure out its trickery. But while it's short, I'd say it's the best way you could spend your hours. Make sure to play with a gamepad for the best experience. Really, my only complain is the last chapter ends with a chase sequence, which is a little annoying, but it's pretty mild in the pantheon of chase sequences, and all the other chapters make it totally worth it.

Love this game, a little on the short side, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, no added fluff here. it's a high quality thrill ride till the end. recommend playing with headphones, the sound design is pretty awesome, and really adds to the experience.

puzzles are very nice would be more difficult if not everyone were showed - for example a possiblity to choose difficulty at start of the game with a possibility to show hints.

The game is a bit short for the price (hence the 4/5), but enjoyable. It's a platformer in the vein of LIMBO or Control, with a lot of horror elements and a slightly creepy artstyle. While short, the game is simple and replayable.