Dark and Deep is the passion of one man, Walter Woods, made into a video game. With a fusion of inspiration such as the Divine comedy, artist Gustav Doré and conspiracies, it is certainly a game that looks like no other but one that seems to lose itself in the dark depths of its own aspirations.
Players take control of a dedicated longtime fan of the podcast Dark and Deep, Samuel Judge. I can’t really go into more detail as the surface story seems simple, but it felt like there was a sub-surface story that I wasn’t exactly getting – possibly due to the complex nature of it, or because its inspirations are outside of my area of knowledge. It probably didn’t help that the story is quite fragmented and given to the player in tiny doses, dragged out through chat boxes on computers. It was intriguing enough to continue playing, but once I had figured out the surface story, it was harder to keep going and ultimately, the ending left me confused and unfulfilled.
Luckily the game had some interesting ideas in terms of gameplay. Samuel Judge is given an empty frame which seems to show a world slightly different to his own and allows him to bring items from that world into existence in his world. As the game progresses, he gets three extra frames with their own abilities. The second frame is one that allows Judge to banish the “crawlers” – creatures that appear to have lost the light and “themselves”, desperately scrambling for any semblance of brightness like an addict after their next hit. This makes up the combat of the game which I will expand on later. The third frame reveals snakes as well as preventing them from moving, not that I found this one very useful. The last frame is one that lets Samuel fight the “drowners”, which are essentially the crawlers in water. I’m unsure as to why the crawlers and drowners needed separate frames, as I felt like the second frame should have been able to deal with both. Again, this could be because I don’t know anything about the artist Gustav and there could be a meaning that I am completely missing.
The game’s combat consists of finding enemies through the second or fourth frame and keeping it focused on that enemy until they die. Some enemies are stationary, while others would come at Samuel while he was doing things. I saw nothing that made me believe the enemies could kill him, but they did make some annoying noises as well as causing visual effects when attacking so, it was often better to deal with them rather than ignore them. I found this aspect of the game a breath of fresh air. It felt a bit like the first frame brought things into existence, while the second frame removed them. Having the enemies be invisible unless they were viewed through the frame helped with the creepy atmosphere, at least in the case of the crawlers and drowners. In contrast to this combat aspect, I found I could mostly ignore the snakes. Snakes are another invisible enemy and will often surround items of importance. The third frame makes them visible, but it will only halt the snakes, not destroy them. At least, for the small snakes. The world snake is another matter, which leads me into my least favourite part of the game, the instant death mechanic.
Now, horror games with instant death mechanics are nothing new. Some great examples would be Resident Evil 4 and 6 and Project Zero/Fatal Frame II. In Resident Evil 4, the most well-known instant death mechanic is when Leon gets attacked by villagers holding chainsaws. The first time players see this they are often shocked and watch the whole cutscene, but every time afterward, this cutscene is skippable. It allows players to get right back into the action and try again. In Resident Evil 6, there’s a section that involves Leon getting pushed into a mincer which requires Quick Time Events to avoid. If the player happens to fail them, it plays the cutscene and then restarts right before that section. Same with Project Zero II. The chase scenes that end with the player being killed if they’re touched by the enemy are often short and sharp with save points between. Unfortunately, Dark and Deep deals with this in the worst way possible. For almost two thirds of the game, water is an instant kill, but it doesn’t kill you instantly. Players must wait until Samuel’s character is under the water and an enemy comes up to kill them. There’s no skipping this cutscene, so there were many times when my character missed a jump and I knew they were dead, but I had to wait for the game to go through its process.
Making the instant deaths harder to deal with is that there is often a lack of checkpoints in platforming sections. Luckily Dark and Deep is generous with its platforming as far as control but platforming can be quite difficult to do in first person mode and even more so when it includes timed puzzles. Infuriatingly, the puzzles and the platforming went hand in hand. Puzzles consisted of revealing pools of ember with the first frame and using an ember from that pool to power a machine. This machine will often do something like lift debris, allow Samuel to throw heavy objects or even shoot a laser. The embers that power the machines are a source of light and the crawlers will stop at nothing to get them. This means figuring out how long it’ll take for them to steal the ember and doing the platforming around that time. This stealing mechanic makes the game different to other puzzle games, but it can be an issue as well.
I ended up stuck in a section right before the end of a puzzle I had immense trouble with, because a crawler had stolen the ember from the laser that kept the instant death fog at bay. I had been trying to get past this section for three nights and ended up rage quitting each time as one slight mistake would require me to start all over again. So being stuck in this position through no fault of my own left a very bitter taste in my mouth. In the end, I had no choice but to die and start all over again. It would have been nice if this section had been split into two checkpoints keeping the second machine activated. So many times, I had the ember for the second machine, but because the ember throw button and the climb button were the same, it meant I had to throw away the ember before climbing out to do it all over again. I wasn’t happy when I found the section I got stuck in was literally the last thing I needed to do to progress. Had the second machine still been active like it was supposed to be, I could have found this out. If this part of the review sounds like a rant, it’s because it is. I needed to get it off my chest.
That said, Dark and Deep wasn’t all bad. I liked the frame combat and i would have really loved it if they had expanded on the frames, including them in the puzzle process. I found myself enjoying the puzzles and story for the first two thirds of the game. But that all seemed to change once I reached the server chapter. The game morphs catacombs into a server room and I thought that it was a cool form of duplicity, so it was rather unfortunate that this part of the game really set off my sim sickness. I got halfway through the labyrinth for the first time when I realised if I didn’t stop right then, I was going to start vomiting. I had no symptoms from this game until this chapter and I was able to get through it the second time going slowly but I did have to go to bed early to recover. So, if you have a history of sim sickness, be aware that this may trigger it.
Ultimately, Dark and Deep feels like a decent game that may have veered off course in trying to stick to its ideals. There are some interesting ideas in there and it isn’t like much else on the market, but it also feels like it is too smart of a game for someone like me who doesn’t have an interest in the Divine comedy or Gustav Doré. I think the worst thing for me is that it probably could have been more than decent and quite enjoyable with just a few changes. It might be the game for you, but the uneducated like me will mourn for what could have been instead.
Player 2 reviewed Dark and Deep on PC with a code kindly provided by the publisher.
