The muted visuals, sparse dialogue and wonderfully realised characters are all threads on this tapestry of sadness.
The world of Darkwoodis miserable and harsh with each new area seeming to be rife with an all-encompassing morbid gloom that permeates everything. Part of the appeal of the early game is getting to grips with your troubling situation and piecing the fragments of the backstory together from scattered information and dialogue from the odd inhabitants of this seemingly endless, towering forest. The game begins with the player character (a nameless protagonist throughout) in a ruined farmhouse with a few meagre supplies nearby as well as a workbench (yes, there’s crafting but it’s not too dense) a table-saw, a very unusual kitchen (that teases you into making ‘the serum’) and some scattered furniture. Originally released for PC in 2017, Darkwoodhas now been ported to the Nintendo Switch, so owners of Nintendo’s popular handheld can also enjoy one of the bleakest worlds in gaming.Ī top-down exploratory survival horror with elements of crafting, Darkwood takes no prisoners, there is a permadeath mode for those truly masochistic but my time with the game was spent in the ‘normal’ mode whereby death ‘merely’ robs you of half your inventory.
