Before I completed Darkwood, it seemed to me that the most depressing game was Cry of Fear, but with the release of Darkwood, this game received this title.
It’s real, absolutely everything here is saturated not so much with despair and misunderstanding, but rather with depression and horror of the approaching night.
The main theme of this game is perfectly described by the instructions for spraying gas in the shelter, before the night, which we find at the very beginning of the game. It says: "There is a 99.9% chance you will die." Not too optimistic, right?
During the day you loot the area and try to somehow move through the gloomy forest, and at night you urgently run to the shelter, turn on the generator, board all the windows and doors, huddle in a corner and wait for the morning, scared by every rustle. This especially works for the first 7-10 nights. But then you realize that life in this game is completely devalued, that is, after death you do not lose anything, no progress, nor start the day or night over, you are simply transported to the nearest shelter and lose things in the place where you died, and in the case of night, you generally skip it stupidly. This breaks the depressive atmosphere of the game, but this problem can be solved by choosing a high level of difficulty, although on it it becomes completely depressing, because you only get 5 lives, and when they are removed, the final game over begins, and you will have to start the whole game from the beginning . Of course, it is possible to beat the game anyway, but only if you are a fierce speedrunner or have completed the game on normal difficulty at least 10 times.
The game is moderately long, moderately open-world, moderately there is an opportunity to fight back the horrors of this wild place.
An excellent plot, a terrifying sound, good gameplay that conveys the theme of survival, and a graphic style, without which it is impossible to imagine this project.
The game also breaks the concept that only first-person games can be scary. Darkwood is a horror game with a top-down view, and from the very first minutes you are immersed in the nightmare of what is happening here, and you can safely conclude: “It’s scary from above too.”
And of course, the history and lore of the game world. When you play for the first time, nothing is clear, but when you launch the project for the second time, everything falls into place. And yes, there is variability here that will affect the fates of the creatures around you (oddly enough, not all of them are hostile).
Really scary enemies that make you panic. Metamorphoses in almost every (non)living creature that surrounds you.
I recommend it to those who are tired of typical horror games in the spirit of Outlast, and who are hungry for something completely new.