In The Dark

6 levels for 4 euros? Your time is even less worth wasting on this trash. No idea why i've spent an hour playing this. The pacing is slow, AI either shoots you from another end of the level or just stands dumb until there's one hit left on it. The floor textures are hard to tell if they are passable or not, until you find yourself stuck with enemies firing at you. Utter garbage.

https://youtu.be/IQG7W9puaVc Poor controls and lackluster enemies are done no favors by the worn out narrative hook of 'scary mental patients'.

This one is bad... this one is really bad! You play a paranormal investigator, that is asked by the mayor to investigate the mysterious events in a mental hospital that has fallen to chaos. PRESENTATION Pretty bad; lots of typos and spelling errors, controller that doesn't work at the start screen, and sometimes some of the buttons fail to work in the levels. Simple menus. The story is revealed through files, that you find at various places throughout the entire game, which is quite short. Sadly, these files cannot be read at times, obviously due to a bug. SOUND AND GRAPHICS Sound is probably the best part of this game; spooky sound effects, groans, lightning, weird eldritch spell noise, all of that. There are some cool lightning effects, and the overall graphic aspect looks appropriate, albeit low budget, but the bad thing is, you cannot tell apart what is an obstacle and what is not! There are furniture pieces such as beds and tables, that you can simply walk over as if they are tiles on the floor, and then there are some amorphous grey objects (slabs?) that stop you from moving; how are you supposed to know which affects your movement? Walls block movement and projectiles, but other times different objects work like that as well, and you cannot tell which is which most of the time. Graphically speaking, there are some cool details like skeletons, asylum debris and rotting paraphernalia, etc., but that's about it. The enemies and player character look unremarkable and forgettable. STORY Simple and cliche'd, ultimately forgettable. There is an insane asylum full of crazy inmates that want to hurt you, there is something else going on, maybe all of those pentagrams painted in blood hint at something supernatural?? GAMEPLAY Pretty bad. The controls are awful if you play with a controller, because your character is eternally locked in the direction your mouse is pointing at; think of it as the clumsiest version of dual stick shooters you have ever seen, but much worse. It's more bearable with mouse and keboard. The protagonist is one of the slowest, most inaccurate shooters in video game history. The enemies never seek you out, they just stay in their corner until they see you, then they start to move and shoot. The game becomes repetitive after 2 levels, and the game itself is quite short (5 or 6 levels I think), it's always the same: find 3 batteries (one by one because your character cannot carry more than one), insert them in a place after much backtracking, find the exit. Repeat. Every. Single. Time. Only 3 types of enemies, some of them shoot rotten flesh, others shoot and move a bit faster, others shoot blood instead. Yeah. You have two weapons, and you immediately figure out that you should use your unlimited ammo gun most of the time, and only use your AK when enemies spawn nearby due to a trigger object. CONCLUSION Good concept, even if cliche'd, that could have been a tongue in cheek experience, but was ruined completely due to typos, control bugs, terrible gameplay, an environment that cannot be navigated well due to nonsensical furniture logic (see SOUND AND GRAPHICS). Bugs that make it impossible to read some of the files in game. Lackluster ending with a cliffhanger that really doesn't get you excited to see it reach a conclusion. Overall, stay away from this one. This is the only game in many years, that I truly regret to have played. Even Larva Mortus was more fun, get that one instead, but check out my review for that one first to see if it's your thing.

Twin-stick horror shooters are something I buy with no hesistation, cause even if they're terrible, i'll still find enjoyment, somewhere. That said, I paid like 60 cents, euro, for this, and I wouldn't recommend getting it at full price. As for quality, there's not much of it. The levels, while different, aren't good looking, interesting, nor are they ever stage for something new. You do the same thing in all 6 stages. Fighting the same 4 kinds of bald man, with mostly the same attack. You have 2 weapons, where the only difference is ammo and fire-rate. Nothing is pretty, most things are obviously assets, the textures used to make the levels look dirty are so bad you can't ever be sure what's an obstacle until you bump into it. The english is almost so bad it's good. That all being said, I still enjoyed the hour I put into it, especially for under a Euro. Think of it as a novelty, of a developer who cared just enough to make a really bad homage to Alone in the Dark. Yes, that's not a joke.

The game consist in collect three generators while you shoot some zombies that shoot poop? at you and read some notes with the story. Only 6 levels, while thats not bad on itself the game also lacks a proper ending and ends with a cliffhanger. The really bad part is the extreme slow movement since you need to backtrack more than a couple of times. Not recommended but guess the dev doesnt care anyway.

In The Dark is yet another construction kit template copy+paste from serial shovelware pushers, Conglomerate 5. These guys do nothing but copy premade game templates and game tutorials, fill out a few things/stamp out basic levels using the construction kit templates, slap on an asset flipped set of sprites/assets, and dump them on Steam and into cheap nasty shovelware game bundles as cash grabs. Trying to get paid for someone else's game templates, assets... at best, this is shovelware, at worst, it's a scam/cash grab. This time, it's "In The Dark", yet another of literally hundreds of lazy amateur 2D retro top-down shooter/brawlers infesting Steam and lowering the average quality of all video games everywhere. It looks like the Russians at Conglomerate 5 got someones abandoned homework assignment they slapped together with Construct 2 and are staging it on Steam for some future review manipulation/money laundering/bundle fixing or whatever other shady crap these guys do [i]all the time[/i]. Conglomerate 5 have shown a repeat pattern of unethically dumping other people's work onto Steam as a cheap, nasty cash grab, through this account or through closely linked/alt accounts. Here's some examples so you can see for yourself: [list] [*] "[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/590870]Planetoid[/url]" = [url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/tools/game-toolkits/tower-defense-toolkit-4-tdtk-4-91023]Tower Defense Toolkit 4[/url] developed by SongGameDev [*] "[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1273380]Weapons Genius VR[/url]" = [url=https://www.gameassetdeals.com/asset/142383/darktree-fps-v1-4]Darktree FPS 1.4[/url] developed by HabTeam [*] "[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1863650]Van Van Up[/url]" = [url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/templates/packs/zigzag-infinite-runner-game-100035]ZigZag Infinite Runner Game[/url] developed by Puppeteer [*] "[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1075790]Fox and Bunny[/url]" = [url=https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/2d/characters/sunny-land-103349]Sunny Land[/url] developed by Ansimuz [*] "[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/1948240]Shark Assault Simulator[/url]" = [url=https://www.sellmyapp.com/downloads/hungry-blue-whale-attack/]Hungry Blue Whale Attack[/url] developed by Agency 25 [*] "[url=https://store.steampowered.com/app/790930]Primitive Shooter[/url]" = [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SviIeTt2_Lc&list=PLFt_AvWsXl0ctd4dgE1F8g3uec4zKNRV0]Create a Game Source code[/url] developed by Sebastian Lague [/list] Taking this shovelware seriously as if it was a genuine attempt to make a game, it doesn't meet basic minimum requirements that most PC gamers expect as standard. There's no option to change the resolution and no useful graphics tweaks. There's no way to ensure this is running at the native resolution of your display. There's no guarantee this game will look right on any PC as a result of this hamfisted design decision. The game features somewhat lazy, simplistic "retro" looking 2D graphics, and it's hard to say if this is due to the age of the assets used, if it's a deliberate attempt for the game to look bad/retro on purpose, or if the assets are just, well, terrible looking. Considering this is being evaluated as a PC game in 2025, such poor quality 2D graphics in the 3D era just aren't good enough, whether it's a deliberate design fault on behalf of the developer or they just couldn't manage to do any better, this is a compromise gamers shouldn't have to put up with. The controls can't be customised, which will be an annoyance for many, but it can also render the game unplayable for differently-abled gamers, left handed gamers or gamers using AZERTY or other international keyboard layouts. Some of the defects in the game can be attributed to the choice of using the Construct 2/Construct 3 game engine/toolset. This is a very poor quality toolset sometimes used by amateur developers as it doesn't require advanced game development skills, but unfortunately has very limited capabilities (it's worse than GameMaker Studio!). Just as you can't make a silk purse out of a sows ear, you can't make a great video game if you use a terrible engine. These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game. The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was only 2 players. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 120 million gamers on Steam and well over 110,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected. So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 110,000+ games on Steam? In The Dark had the preposterous price of around $5 USD , it's not worth it given the defects and shortcomings with the product, especially considering the unethical nature of the developer. It's now discounted... still not worth it. For comparison, the $5 asking price for this game could get you games like "Portal", "Ark: Survival Evolved" or "Torchlight 2". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. [quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b] Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]