Darkwood

Great game, best played blind.

El mundo que crearon en este juego es increíblemente inmersivo, melancólico y miserable, amoooooo

When you are trying to make a horror movie. The bear minimum of your wishes is to spell fear in the audience. And while movies have largely figured out all the best ways to accomplish this purpose, game designers have not. Most of them at least. So many horror games live on giving the player false agency or straight up removing agency. This is because its really easy to immerse the player into your world with visuals, sounds, and atmosphere. Then once they are in, leave them powerless and at mercy to the monsters. This setup is super popular. Just one problem, its not a game. There’s no true interactions. No ability to determine/influence outcomes. If a horror game gives you a choice, it’s gonna have its own ending. Making whatever choices you do make permanent. You know what that means? It means there’s no testing the waters. No playing around. No game. No true agency. You can only give proper agency to the player by give them sufficient information to make the said choice. Much of modern horror uses the “Fear of the Unknown” as its driving force and template. With a movie this is okay. Movies don’t need too much on our part to work. Just us to follow a story and look for foreshadowing. But a video game 100% dependent on the actions of the user. SO YOU CAN’T THROW AWAY ALL THE PLAYER’S TOOLS AND EXPECT IT TO WORK! IT WILL BE A GLORIFIED CUTSCENE! This is partly due to horror fanatics being awful at video games. A developer would love to have us figure out extremely intricate puzzles to progress the story and connect the dots. But unless it is put directly in front of a player. They will not find clues and they will get stuck. Tutorials are so boring and they often get in the way of horror elements. So many horror games give up on tutorials all together because of this. The logic goes like this: “The more the user knows, the less scary it will be. So by removing agency, he wont get lost and our game will be scary in the way we want it.” However that’s only a partly true statement. The reason why players want to play horror games is for exploration combined with thrills and a little adventure or test of spirit. By hiding clues that contain information around the scene the player will gain agency to progress the story on his own. Giving the player tools to find clues is a extension of this. This includes capable weapons. The more information the player finds. The more tools he gets. And the more questions he will find. Sometimes without closure. Is that so hard to understand? No. Its hard to create. Which is why many games don’t do it. Darkwood does much, much better at delivering a horror game than it’s competitors. Especially for its time. To start. Your resources/tools are finite. You’re on a clock to uncover the truth and are punished severely for failure. So the only way to progress the story is to take risks. But through said risks you learn quickly how to play the game and prepare for failure. Making you better at the game but also smarter with more and more agency as time goes on. You’ll miss many clues in chapter 1 but you’ll get almost all of them in chapter 2. The prologue teaches you basic controls and that’s it. By giving your character huge blind spots the player becomes anxious and on his feet. The map is randomly generated and your location isn’t shown. Instead you almost always have only a approximation of where you are at any one time. This is your “Fear of the Unknown.” Implemented in a way that the player can easily accept and work with. By exploring the map you create markers which are highlighted when you are next to them. A beautiful mechanic. Executed in a way unique to this game. Time also matters to punish you for getting lost. If you don’t go back to base you effectively die. Making farther, more challenging quests stressful and more risky. Requiring you to know your surroundings well. Especially since very often the environment lies to you. Objects do not always reflect reality. Your weapons at the beginning of the game have like only 8-12 uses. Which means you cannot depend on them at all times. You have to use many different weapons to kill enemies. Some of which require setup and are hard to use. Combine this with the fact that almost all weapons have around a 1 second windup and are extremely easy to miss with. This all makes Darkwood have easily the most difficult combat out of any horror title. Your agency isn’t removed. But rather it’s much easier for the monsters to hurt you than for you to hurt it. Most fights will have a lot of fleeing. Overtime your weapons get much stronger. And you get more of them. So while losing firepower was really challenging in the beginning. It’s much less so later on. I do wish there was ways to use the terrain for combat. But there’s no such mechanic. Oh well. Death works in the opposite way. It’s unavoidable in most early risks so you will die a lot in the beginning. But you will also learn move-sets and patterns quicker. It also leaves a spot on your map for you to better gauge where everything is. A fantastic way to help the player learn from mistakes. It seems so simple but its easy to get wrong. Each mechanic balances assistance and governance to the player. When they are too easy to exploit, The game feels easy. And the player gets bored rather than scared. When they are hard/impractical to exploit, The game is frustrating. And player feels like he has no choices which also leads to not being scared or thrilled. Darkwood has frustrating mechanics too. It’s not perfect. It’s “Drumroll”…… The Stamina Bar. This single feature throws all other mechanics over the line. Darkwood is one of the most frustrating games I’ve ever played. The randomly generated map is groundbreaking. The combat is fun and unique (if a bit stacked against you). The game is generous with making mistakes yet punishing at the same time. But the stamina bar will make all those mechanics consistently unfun down the line. It’s easily the most overused, outdated and purposeless feature in horror games. All of Darkwood problems stem from THAT ONE STUPID BAR! It doesn’t make the combat harder. It doesn’t make the map work better in it’s purpose. It doesn’t advance the story ever. You can easily escape enemies using terrain/structures. All it’s doing is making the game take twice as long to do anything. With NO options to get around that. This game should take 10-15 hours to complete. Instead it takes 25 hours of fighting with all the cool mechanics all because the Stamina Bar is just that uncool and unfulfilling to use. I can find my own ways to escape a fight. But I can’t circumvent that bar. Acid Wizard has to remove it from all their games. Because of this, I cannot recommend this game to anybody. If you do wish to play though: [spoiler]- Spend the first day acquiring resources and getting healing and light sources. You can’t see traps well so using lanterns in the daytime is not a bad strategy. Especially in chapter 2 when they are cheap. - Always pick fights in wide open areas. Walls can help with escapes and ambushes. But most death are from you getting cornered. Plus the guns in this game are REALLY good. You want to spend at least 1 second to aim before you take the shot. So just be patient with them. - Chapter 2 starts when you open the metal door 21 in the catacombs. Bring As much as you can. - The “Appetite” skill is used by holding right-click over wood planks or logs while using your inventory. Not in hotbar. The game do not tell you how to do this. - The “Acid Blood” skill is broken. Don’t grab it. - You should only ever craft each weapon one time. Darkwood gives all of them for free eventually. But crafting weapons will get you ahead earlier thus opening more of the map sooner. Opt to instead repair and upgrade them. - There’s secret paths on the map’s edge. Use a lantern to find them. - You can eat mushrooms and odd meat. Not just use them for upgrades. [/spoiler]

72 часа кошмара, который пробирает до мурашек и отравляет своим безумием. Здесь нет правильных решений, только последствия. Судьбы Торговца и Петрека разбивают моё сердце, а рандом локаций делает каждое прохождение уникальным. мне понравилось советую

Me cague en las patas a pesar de tener un punto de vista isométrico. 10/10

8/10，氛围感很强的恐怖游戏，全篇没有jumpscare但压抑程度拉满，纯当个生存游戏也不错。剧情方面因为大量架空设定，说实话我玩完双线路和全结局还是对剧情有很多存疑，而且整个故事背景需要自己通过各种支线和道具暗示一点点拼凑出来，剩下无法解释的只能接受官方设定了，前期很容易被弱引导和迷惑剧情劝退。

Невероятный и атмосфернейший эталон жанра хоррор.Настоящий хоррор не должен пугать монстрами и скримерами.Он должен давить своей загадочностью и атмосферой.Дарквуд с этим прекрасно справляется.Игру однозначно рекомендую.

Лучшая игра, в которую я больше никогда не зайду