On Dark Terms

gg bug on bug, getting killed even when you can't get killed, nice job

On Dark Terms is a cute and unique game with a lot of charm. However, there are several spots where you can get stuck on the map and small bugs that can pull you out of the experience. These issues detract a bit from how special the game feels. The devs have been transparent about their challenges as a small team, which is commendable. While I understand the excitement of starting new projects, it might be worth focusing on polishing this gem first. With some fixes, this game could truly shine, and I look forward to seeing how it evolves!"

schlecht

I like the concept. But it's not executed very well at all. Bugs: - When I Right Click, it will use the right click OUTSIDE of the active window. Maybe this is a "me" issue, maybe this is an actual bug for the game, but it makes quick actions impossible. - Quests in multiplayer mode are not completing. - Sometimes the nearby item icons don't show up. Feedback: Exploration - Exploration is okay, but really only used for finding the crafting items. Costume pieces is not really enough. I would recommend more collectibles (ex: the bobble heads from Fallout, could be different types of rubber ducks!), and interactable objects and NPCs, or discoverable staged scenes. Yknow, fun stuff! - Parkour is difficult when colliding with certain objects makes you slide instead of simply stop. Really don't like the sliding. - You can't interact with or pet other cats :( or the crows either. - There's no constant quest objective option. You have to actually open your journal to see any active quests. - There's no indicator on the map to point to other players. You have to actually open the map to see other players' icons. Tutorials - There's no real "guided" tutorial, just tooltips on the screen that are wordy to read, and the interactable computers to read MORE steps, and then have to remember them in the moment. This is tedious and not very user-friendly. A more visual tutorial would be better. - Tooltips are wordy and take time to read, which is very time consuming in the moment (during dungeons specifically when quick action is needed, so pausing the game to provide direction here may be more preferred, or shortening the wording to be MUCH more concise) - Having each entity type have its own process is nice, but not when it's even more reading just to understand what the new steps are. I'd have to do tutorial mode AND practice mode for each of the entity types just to learn their process. I recommend making the progress more unified, or completely revamping the tutorial guides to be more interactive than reading. - As soon as you pick a mode that's not Tutorial or Practice, the tooltips go away entirely and there's no direction. This means that dungeon progression is even more difficult to track, especially when progression can go backwards. - Neither Tutorial nor Practice mode for dungeons mentions the little bubbles in the bottom left that track how many darkness things you get. This would have been very good information to know before starting a dungeon, or while going through tutorial mode. - Multiplayer tutorial tooltips do not always match up. - There is no tutorial for experience or skills. You only get exp from Practice mode or up, and you only get skill points from level 1 and up. Also, EXP is only used for cosmetics, instead of skills...? Dungeons - Progression steps through the dungeon is inconsistent. Sometimes it just...goes backwards. This makes it confusing to track. Not sure if this is intentionally caused by certain events, or if it's a bug. - Progression items in the dungeon remain interactable regardless of dungeon progression. This makes it difficult to readily track the progress of the dungeon. - Overlapping of events in dungeons makes the progression/experience even more confusing. I recommend preventing certain events from happening while actively interacting with something. You should not have a flash hunt begin while you're in a menu. - Dungeons have a very large amount of steps, making the dungeon process a bigger part of the game than exploration. - Flash Hunts are per-player, rather than per-server. My flash hunts happen without my partner encountering them. Not sure if this is a feature or a bug, but it makes playing multiplayer disconnected. - Flash hunts ending abruptly with no visual indicator is confusing, especially when there's no visual indicator for the sanity levels. The end of the flash hunt is the same regardless of whether you successfully end the hunt using the camcorder, or if you get hit to end the hunt. - Hallucinations can attempt to possess you, OR you simply die instantly, and there doesn't seem to be a clear indicator as to when one of them will happen. If there's a reason, it wasn't made apparent to me in any of the tutorial instructions. - The creature can "awaken" in the dungeon itself, which is a bit much to deal with while ALSO trying to complete the progression steps. Flash hunts? Okay. Hallucinations? Makes sense. But having the Awakening on top of those makes the dungeon portion of the game over-complicated. - The visual indicators for the entity awakening are: You are forced out of catmode, and the screen goes red. But only sometimes. And only if you're within a certain radius, I think? The tooltips and tutorials aren't really clear about this. If they mention it at all. - During the Hunt, having ALL of the entities be able to do ALL of the activities makes it difficult to track. The frequency which each of the things has is far too similar in frequency, making it confusing to get the right entity. On single-player, some of these are very difficult to spot since some of the activities are multiplayer-specific. - There's no visual indicators when your stamina or sanity are critical levels. - Camera angles/perspectives are forced to change a LOT. It's very disorienting and jarring, and not in a "this is a horror game, it's supposed to be that way" - Sometimes when re-entering a dungeon after dying, I just die spontaneously? There isn't really any indicator as to how or why. I assume it's because there are entities that have spawned, but I never lasted long enough to figure it out Etc - Lack of accessibility settings. As someone with motion sickness, I'm limited on the games I can play, so having these settings is important to me. Head bob is a huge one, and screen blur effects is another (during flash hunt, hallucinations, etc). Being stuck in first-person mode is another big one, I need camera angle settings. - "Change Camera" changes the camcorder, not your POV Camera angle. Bad. - Make the left click, right click, etc actually mappable. Making certain buttons unmappable is not really very well done, and would have fixed my "right click" problem very easily, and made this game more tolerable. - Audio is REALLY dim. I have to turn my computer audio all the way up, including in-game, in order to hear anything at all, and it's still very low volume. This makes the audio cues incredibly difficult to use. In summary, this game isn't hard.. it's just kinda badly designed? Like, there's a lot going on that makes certain aspects of this game overwhelming, and the tutorial aspect is severely lacking, along with certain typical aspects of game design that are not very well executed or are simply missing entirely, making the experience overall frustrating.

Sorry but no...We were 4 people in the co-op. Each person had a different quest in the tutorial when someone did the first task. In the end we finally "completed" the tutorial, but not for the game. For each person it was written again: You should finish the first tutorial dungeon. That's no fun! The idea was so good! The map was so good! The sounds were good! Cats are always good! But we couldn't play it. I hope there are more updates in the future and I can rewrite this review.

This game has a really cool concept, but the way the gameplay and monsters are implemented make it a really lackluster and unfun experience.

It's a really cool game. Its' just made so annoyingly difficult to play even In "Practice" mode. I would love to keep playing it but, they just find you way to quickly. There is no escape or fighting when they find you either. So you get killed to have your little cat friend find life for you and start all over again. The corruption happens way to quickly as well. Just moves too fast with no real option for fight or flight when found and way to easily found. I just hope the devs fix it and make it playable, Really love it otherwise...If they fix it I will give it another shot and update my review. As of now though. I would not recommend. Which honestly pains me to say. It has potential.

The game has a particularly bad first-time user experience imo. Doing your first dungeon in the training tutorial mode is exceedingly boring up until the hunt itself because almost all the interesting gameplay mechanics are disabled so it's easy to be really disappointed like "oh.. this is the game?" by that experience. The train station map near the starting apartment is also very small and lacks any sort of atmosphere. I think this is all by design to give first-time players the bare basics before exposing them to the other gameplay mechanics, but for me it just gave the first impression that the game had little to offer and was quite boring. I did have some excitement though, in the form of game-breaking issues with the demon hunt on that tutorial difficulty in the train station every time I attempted it that literally made my whole group rage quit as it seemed unwinnable and nigh impossible to even start the hunt again after the first time. So I would not suggest picking Demon for your first dungeon until that is resolved. So my friend group's first experience with the game was first that it was very boring and then that it was utterly broken. Not a great combo. The game contains spelling errors, objects missing collision, floating objects and placement issues, easily recognizable store assets seen in other games, and is generally unpolished. I think most of that can be waived away by it being in early access and having a single dev, but I'm mentioning it. So after all that negativity... I would definitely recommend giving this game a shot. Once you get through the tutorial/training bits, it actually ends up being a very fun little game. Some of the locations have a pretty good atmosphere and it can create a good sense of tension trying to find your objectives while the corruption level is creeping ever-upwards. The corruption, flash hunts, and embodiments add a lot to the gameplay and make it feel much more like a genuine game than the tutorial makes it out to seem. It's actually great fun just to run around collecting items as a cat even though the gameplay in the "open world" is basically non-existent aside from jumping puzzles - the jumping and movement feels great. It feels more like I'm speeding around playing quake than sluggishly trudging around like in demonologist or phasmo. Death also is easily and quickly reversed so no one is just standing around twiddling thumbs spectating as the dead. Speaking of demonologist and phasmo, don't expect it to really be anything like other "ghost-hunting" games aside from at a broad surface level. There's essentially no deduction/investigation needed to actually identify the entities - you collect hidden objects/evidence in a predetermined order like going down a checklist in order to open a portal where the hunt starts and you have basically a random chance to guess what the entity is based on their abilities unless you use embodiments to narrow the choices down. The fun is in surviving the ordeal or going for speed, not identifying the entity type. It's very different gameplay-wise, but it "feels" in the moment more like Labyrinthine where you're completing objectives and/or puzzles to escape rather than hunting a ghost.