Enter a forest: it seems endless the further you go and becomes nerve-racking to be stranded in during nighttime. The setting is perfect yet undoubtedly cliche in horror, but Darkwood carves a memorable, terrifying experience from its trees in a dark, twisted fashion.
Why you’re trapped in a vast Polish forest doesn’t matter—how you’re escaping it does. After awakening in an estranged cabin, the game lets you independently make your departure. This difficult survival horror game doesn’t lecture you about what not to do. Fail to utilize your survival instincts and better judgment, and you’ll figure everything out the hard way.
The woods that Darkwood creates are more than claustrophobic groups of trees coated in roots and fungi– it’s an ecosystem of supernatural creatures, underground horrors, hostile tribes, and more. There’s no heaven above these canopies, only what’s waiting below.
During your journey from point A to point B, there are sights that would make someone scratch their head, but then there’s the stuff of nightmares lurking in the dark. Regardless, locations are unpredictable and interesting.
Finding a gramophone playing inside of a collapsed windmill will make you freeze and wonder if whoever started it is nearby. Similarly, discovering a bride dancing alone at an abandoned wedding ceremony might make you back away slowly.
During your quest, you will also meet distinctively outlandish characters on a spectrum between being insanely sick or being sickly insane.
A standout is The Wolfman, an ill-tempered, anthropomorphic wolf that calls you “meat,” trades items, and identifies artifacts. Interact enough and he’ll tell you to silence the squealing coming from a derelict pig farm with more than just swine in it.
Darkwood conjures up grave anxiety and fear from these encounters from a top-down perspective. In an industry oversaturated with first-person horror titles, that sounds relieving, but Darkwood measures up to their fear factor without using tropes like jump-scares.
Your central vision is represented by a cone that colors the environment and reveals enemies, symbolizing your focus. Actions like checking your backpack, looking through cracks, or standing amidst trees will narrow the cone. Everything outside of it appears colorless and grotesque yet shows some environmental differences.
Even while allowing character flexibility, Darkwood doesn’t want you to be powerful. Deviating from easy, typical character enhancement in games today, Darkwood’s idea of a breath of fresh air looks like panting after putting in effort.
Most skills can only be used once daily, like marking your location on your map or briefly sprinting without stamina are obtained by cooking specific amounts of items like mushrooms. Upgrading anything like inventory space or weapons requires a workbench that consumes resources that are rare to find and expensive to buy.
Self-defense is also tough. Avoid conflict, but when you can’t, combat is slow and risky. The target on your head never shrinks whether you have a stick, an axe, or one of the few guns you must craft rather than finding them fully assembled.
No time is worse than night. Part of your daily routine involves beelining to a shelter, securing it by lighting the oven, and surviving until dawn. During these holdouts, you’re paying attention to what might break inside. The flinch-worthy sound design assists, but what you see can get under your skin. Seeing a lamp in a nearby room move on its own is terrifying when you realize the ungodly truth: Something or someone just bumped into it.
However, Darkwood plays with your head. Sometimes, nothing happens, or worse: What you should worry about isn’t where you thought it was.
The amount of interactivity is the glue holding everything together. Darkwood chucks you many problems and allows different ways to tackle them. Containers like wardrobes can hold your possessions but also be pushed to block openings. You can dismantle bear traps you find or leave them in case you’re chased later. Gasoline can power generators but also burn away live, carnivorous mold on the floor if you have a match.
Darkwood takes 20 or more hours to beat, which is a sweetened deal given that most indie horror games are short. This is an open world to explore, to dread, and to cut your way through, but it lets you do the heavy lifting. The latter never felt like a setback—only a challenge worth taking on that barely any games have the guts to enact.
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