This is part of a continuing series of old rants/essays/snark/thoughts/etc/etc/etc from years back that I figured I might as well throw somewhere other than a decrepit and deleted Discord server. This one comes from a “video game book club” that I played with some fellow traveler nerds.

As Always, Assume Spoilers

Intro

So, Darkwood. Please at the following dismissive caveats to all my critiques:

  • Survival games are not my thing
  • Top down non-tactical is not my thing

The Thoughts in Question

Prologue

  • Menu music? Fucking amazing. Love it.
  • They’re really leaning on “evocative vagueness” as a thing, which I usually like. I think they’re being a bit too vague though as I couldn’t figure out that the forest was the “enemy” until after the first rambling cutscene.
  • The UI is super muddy, and difficult to read things on.
  • The controls are . . . Bizarre. Playing on controller, literally nothing feels right.
  • Sometimes my weapon swings fast, not other times. Not sure why.
  • That puzzle was straight up nonsense, why is a radio wired corpse saying lock combos?

Chapter 1 (barely started):

  • The general vagueness of this thing is killing me. I’m mostly just struggling and repeatedly dying as I try to figure out what my goals are supposed to be. This is definitely a problem of mine, personally, I need some form of broad goal to motivate me.
  • I tend to be motivated by exploring and finding new interesting things. Here, like a lot of survival games, the motivation is to find things to stave off death. That simple inversing is fucking with me.
  • Am I supposed to be doing nothing at night? I’ve died every night because I can’t use the bed (I assume I need the shrooms?) and I get bored/frustrated doing nothing and either go outside or a dog breaks in. Either way, I Am Meat.
  • I lied: my impatience is actually what’s killing me. Between the long gaps of “now what” and the fact that the avatar is in worse shape than a slug, everything feels like it’s moving incredibly slowly. Not necessarily deliberately, just slowly.
  • I will find a weapon yet.
  • I have so far repaired my kitchen door and one window, but nothing else.
  • I do like the bizarrely fairy tale nature of the atmosphere.
  • Current goals: find red mushrooms, find planks, go from there
  • Bear traps walked into: 2
  • Poisonous mushrooms walked into: many

Latest from Darkwood

  • I found the solution to my gear issues: molotov cocktails. Broke out a few and was able to get much farther through acquiring a chain of sticks and an upgraded pitchfork
  • Finally got the (non red guy) combat to click mostly because a little range means I can see the attack animations
  • WTF are these banshees doing? Just killing the lights and spawning a billion mini guys?
  • I found the village! I misunderstood what the village was before this. I’m annoyed how many keys
  • I built a gun but have not used it. I debated shooting my way over the bridge, but I suspect it will just go hell.
  • I figured out the pig farm only to be blocked by an obviously special item to progress
  • Guess the plan is to go back to the village at try to trigger some way to get the magic item.
  • The linearity seems to be increasing, but I can’t tell towards what. It’s mostly negative reinforcement slapping we away until I find the correct way forward.
  • Current day: 23

Key critique: the trader getting reputation feels increasingly like the core mechanic and I have very mixed opinions. It’s the opposite of a rubber band effect: the more you survive, the more you leapfrog ahead. And it gives you more resources than almost anything else except for very rare items. If you took out the trader, the power curve doesn’t work. But it feels like a hack relative to the survival mechanic - it’s an inelegant motivation for the player to actually survive that has to be balanced.

Big update

  • I have done a couple quests after walking past them a few times like an idiot!
  • Pietro’s quest: not really sure what was going on there beyond a colorful NPC, but with how few there are he really stands out. Elton John must be his favorite musician.
  • The Wolf’s quest felt super weird. It was a borderline RPG/adventure quest. Lots of bizarre little evocative moments, but I don’t feel like it advanced the plot nor was it really self contained. It’s clearly the centerpiece of the Silent Woods though. Keyword(phase?): chicken head for pretty lady
  • I’ve finally figured out the pig farm (which is clearly meant to be last in sequence enough I found it first). I haven’t actually taken any final action mostly because I feel I lack information and the game isn’t really pushing me to (minus like one crazy lady in a throwaway line). I did massacre everyone there, though. I also think it’s very funny that the ||redacted, fuck you buddy|| at the end of the barn can’t be seen without a flashlight even at point blank range.
  • The structure of the village feels . . . Disconnected from the rest of the game. What with the time freezing, huge size, fast travel, and large numbers of random background NPCs. Honestly feels like a completely different game.
  • The well was moderately interesting as a concept, although the UI made it very unclear what that annoying thing was.
  • Gameplay is tolerable, now that I can parse the UI and have a weapon that lets me actually hit. I don’t love it, but it feels better. I understand the enemy design now and feel like I stand a chance of a fight going either way rather than my 80% initial loss rate. The combat rhythm is actually very close to Soulslikes, although it lacks the clear animations of that genre (which is a cornerstone of it, so . . .)
  • Had another dream sequence, hopped in the grave because I wasn’t sure there were any other options?
  • Tier 2 weakness: blinking when hit.
  • I’m looking at the size of the Old Woods with definite fatigue. The Silent Woods are exhausting enough, and the Old Woods look 30% bigger.

Postcards from Darkwood

  • I got to the Old Woods hideout (I was like ten feet away from the map triggering before) 
  • Unlocked the full map loop. I have no idea what this supposed fucking swamp is, haven’t seen it.
  • Damn, this pistol sucks at damage. Range is definitely nice, but it’s the same damage as my pitchfork. I’m just invoking Herr Molotov on everything in the world.
  • Had the third dream: Well, I’m intrigued but cockblocked at the church anyway. I wonder what happens if you know the code already. The “vibe” of this game is everywhere, now it’s the creepy thing in the church basement? I also think the ghost that jumps you is the same thing that fucks you up in the prologue. I recognized that I already found the white dress in the Dry Meadow (might have been the same area as the wedding), I need to find the key for the box, and I don’t think I’ve seen the seesaw yet. * Per the Wolf, the Wedding is the same as the Party 
  • The Wolf/I assume Hunter is clearly deeply involved in all this, but I haven’t seen any main plot advancement since the actual beginning of the game. 
  • New Nighttime event: spreading blackness 
  • New Nighttime event: so many wolves - and the new hideout is wicked linear.
  • I’m not sure whether to chase the Doctor or the side quest that might have actual plot/lore? The last run of quests was . . . not very satisfying, so I’m tempted to rush the ending.

Old (Dark)Woods Update

  • A buddy of mine was right, the Old Woods is just combat after combat. And they’re not that interesting, unfortunately.
  • Most bullshit nighttime invasion: A banshee, plus two Chompers all at once! Bad fucking times, I got backed into a corner and beat to death. Is it even possible to not die once cornered? The next night the game basically apologized by only sending one dog in.
  • I am burning resources like crazy, I was full up at the workbench and now I’m at half of everything.
  • I got under the church. It’s kinda bullshit. After you have the third dream, it just spawns a guy who just says the code out loud. Which is just lame gating, because the player can’t actually do anything and has no real way to know that the blocker will just be kinda removed. The pit beneath is creepy and interesting but a bit too combat grindy and claustrophobic for this combat system.
  • Re: The Wolf - was he intentionally lying about the location of the Doctor? He says go east instead of north, but I can’t figure out why. Once you get to the barn, he just acts weirdly violent towards you - and then gives you a gun and helps you out on the spot? Yeah, I don’t get it. Also I guess he ate the pretty lady for . . . reasons? I’m also assuming that he’s the missing Hunter but I don’t know why he’s in the barn.
  • The Black Box: Well, it kinda references things I understand, but as far as I can tell from the drawings so far - it was just the fault of a dog eating a mushroom and dying. Not sure how the church comes into it yet.
  • I found the Doctor’s place: of course he’s not fucking there! I spent twenty minutes looking around before seeing the locked safe. Couldn’t find the combo so I tried to leave and of course then I get the “plot prompt” to kill a nutter for his keys. For a game that doesn’t want to hold my hand, it sure is. Wish I hadn’t wasted twenty real world minutes looking for something that didn’t exist. I guess I have to find the split house mentioned in the drawing, and I don’t remember which house that is, which is fucking frustrating.
  • As far as the mechanics go, the trader/oven boosts for later hideouts are kinda weak. I see why they exist, they provide motivation to keep going and allow the game to not be softlocked by resource starvation, but they’re so clunky and artificial . . .
  • Goddammit guns, I was excited to get the hunting rifle but I guess it only had one bullet?
  • I’m also kinda tired of the arbitrary gating. The game has quests that direct you in specific directions and often block areas until some arbitrary point. But they’re not really tied into the progression of anything. Pietrok’s quest felt like the right size for this game, but the Wolf’s full-game quest feels like it’s the size of a main quest while also having nothing to do with the actual main quest so far. I did so many things, but only the map feels like it shows any form of progress.

If you go down to the Darkwoods today . . .

  • Mostly spent time wondering WTF I was supposed to be doing. I did find the red seesaw, to no real point or end.
  • I got into a few more areas in the village, like the cannibal’s house. I keep finding items that just don’t f***ing matter. (I know because I ran around to all the available NPCs to see)
  • There’s a fucking dodge!? Somehow I missed or forgot that. Not that I think it’s ever helped me.
  • I found where the violinist goes! Turns out he moves to the silo, in a part I didn’t even know you could walk into. He asks for meat from the sow. I have no idea how anyone was supposed to get this.
  • I still have not solved the sow puzzle. There’s a whole thing on stunning it, but the time to get to it is way too long. Not sure I want to actually release the lock, because I’d rather not starve the whole village if that turns it loose.
  • I finally gave in and googled started googling how to advance. ||Yeah, I was literally never gonna solve that puzzle in the Doctor’s house, because it requires squinting weirdly and the UI is really bad at showing things. Plus the Doctor’s house fog or war shows a very different set of items, including one number that only shows up in the fog of war? Fuck that.||
  • Major spoilers here: ||So, I found the doctor in the train wreck. Not sure why he’s there, honestly. I also had to Google to confirm this shit, because I couldn’t figure out where the damn door is because it’s only like 2 pixels high and twenty pixels long. I spent three “game worlds” hours. Running around the fucking car . . . The doctor was very lucky I had the patience remaining to not kill him. So I’m off to the races with him at my side I guess. Still no plot details yet - or any form of the Doctor acknowledging what happened when I cracked his skull. ||
  • God bless the axe.
  • Next up: the bunker, I think. Unless I want to get more loot and upgrade my axe first.

The final vomit

  • So, I never actually went into the swamp, but given our agreement that this is a good wrapup place I don’t feel too bad. I’ve compensated by reading a bunch of wiki pages to understand the design philosophy better. As such, there may be some mistakes present.
  • We didn’t miss much from the upcoming 1.4 patch (Editor: yep, long time ago) - looks like it’s mostly quality of life changes and minor bug fixes.
  • So, there’s this thing I call “beginner’s overeagerness” where they overstuff their first art piece. You can see it here, because they are using every trope of Eastern Bloc horror. Dark woods? Fairy-tale like creatures/beastmen? Dreamlike states? Plagues? Hostile and weird neighbors? Soviet soldiers? Flamethrowers? Strange mysterious alien beings with unknown goals? Seriously, it’s everything. Unfortunately, they’re not really woven together or put to anything thematically coherent. No element is grounded in something I can understand on a human level, including the protagonist. It’s just every bit of imagery that haunts the Polish psyche dumped in front of you.
  • Is this supposed to be a replayed game? The presence of choices, the “true ending,” and the random locations imply so, but honestly the game is just a little bit too linear to feel fresh on restart. It doesn’t quite have roguelike energy either, given the length. I feel like I’m supposed to be speedrunning, given resource attrition. But the quests seem to argue against that - you have to do them to get certain critical items, but they take a lot of running around time. And they don’t change at all, so they feel samey.
  • UI Issues - I definitely struggled hard with these. Things like not being able to see attacks made it hard to figure out what was going on. It also made it impossible for me to tell that the black “ghosts” are Black Chompers, so I missed what would have been useful world context. I missed door and numbers and entire NPCs.
  • The endings are kinda whacked out. I hate golden endings on the best days, you all know this, I’ll avoid going on this rant unless one of you intentionally and stupidly provokes me. But neither one feels right to me.
  • The “normal ending” just feels empty and meaningless. You’re just . . . Done. Why you’re done is pretty unclear. There’s no sense of victory or completion. The fact you can realize it’s a fake ending is interesting, but . . . What if you do? It just feels like a “bad ending” if so. And it’s the ending that 90% of people are going to see.
  • And the true ending actively refuses any explanation. I don’t need everything explained in a story, but I need things to feel complete or finished. The plot here never really gives answers to anything other than “that weird thing did it”. You just . . . Burn the forest down. Which somehow you can do but no one else can. Also it requires so many steps on the wiki page. Yay, you stopped the forest using the most obvious tactic you could think of. But functionally, does this feel any different that just leaving a supernatural forest? It’s done but I don’t feel like digging into this secret and learning “the truth” would leave me feeling any more satisfied than “it’s just a random magical forest.”
  • Vagueness in storytelling is interesting to me. Going back and replaying other paths to get a full idea of the story/world isn’t inherently bad to me. Problem is that you need a compelling gameplay style in order to do so. I can replay Dark Souls because I like the combat and there’s a victorious power lap you can do on the second round. But I need the first playthrough to actually make sense on some level (DS1 is very bad at this, but it does avoid true endings). The problem here is that with no real answers you can only figure out one hidden detail. The only actual evidence that humans turn into Chompers is in the Musician’s quest path. Which explains people locking themselves in the Church. And that’s . . . It. Also, this tends to be a sin in my book: if your story is vague in a game, the storytelling should be aware that the player doesn’t understand what’s happening. I don’t think that this game quite took that into consideration. There’s a bunch of weird obscure details (like why the doctor is there and what he’s doing) that feel like they could have been stated much more clearly. There’s no reason for them to be secrets.
  • Look, I’ve played the Witcher games. I’m okay with the unforeseen consequences of quest choices. But the Witcher tends to give an upside as well as a downside, even if it’s just “getting paid.” My only incentive to engage in any quest except the Wolf’s is basically “hoping to learn about the world, which won’t happen.” It seems actively better to disengage from quests according to the results.
  • It seems very obvious to me that the game was built in iterative chunks. That’s not bad inherently (it’s usually correct!), but if you read the release notes you can tell that the devs not only iterated on gameplay but released content in waves. This might explain some of the disconnectedness of the areas and the parts of the story that feel thematically at odds. (I get that a lot can be put at the door of the sciencemagic plague, but nothing explains the ghost dancers)
  • I actually like the idea behind the core gameplay loop of “explore for resources during the day, barricade at night.” Problem is that it feels like extrapolating that into a full game with quests didn’t quite land. One of the reasons I don’t care for Don’t Starve is that it has a feeling of stasis - building a better base feels safer, but there’s no feeling of progress. So this game needed something. I probably would have cut the explicit quests in favor of more environmental storytelling and/or character journals. Something more System Shock 2.
  • I feel mixed on the difficulty. On one hand, horror requires challenge and that requires difficulty. Difficulty doesn’t inherently scare me off. But you have to walk a fine line between that difficulty feeling fair and feeling frustrating. Darkwood hits my “frustrating” button hard, because I spent a lot of time waiting or running. Dark Souls has this lovely knack (most of the time) for fights where you feel you could have won if you hadn’t gotten greedy or had better timing. I felt that sometimes in Darkwood, but mostly I just felt fucked. Now, that could also be down to lacking resources, but now that I’ve seen the curve I don’t think that was the problem. Honestly this is more art than science. Every complaint I just made could also be leveled at the RE2 Remake and I loved that.
  • I liked the randomness at the heart of the nighttime events and not knowing what’s coming. The extremely variable nature gives you hope, but also fear. Pity that the combat engine doesn’t really work for this, and it’s increasingly likely to just get combos that feel unbeatable. I never got “ghosts + banshee” but it’s possible.
  • The real issue at the heart of the game is the Death Spiral - once you start losing fights, you’ve wasted resources that you can’t get back. This is a common risk of survival games. If you have a finite amount of resources on the map, you can soft lock by running out. If you have an infinite amount, people can get cozy. I know here I started that spiral at the end of the Old Woods. It serves to push you forward, but also I wasn’t exactly finding better stuff as I pushed ahead so there really wasn’t really a curve.
  • I suspect the designers knew about this, because the trader solves so many of the problems that the base design has. Why survive the night? Gear from the trader. How to avoid resource starvation? Survive the night and buy from the trader. Don’t want players becoming OP early? Use the price of the item at the merchant as a gate. It forces you to engage. It’s also extremely artificial and makes no sense in universe (why does this guy give you items for surviving the night? No idea), but the more atmospheric the game the more jarring the artifice is. (For example, Overwatch is artificial as hell so they can get away with a lot) He doesn’t feel well integrated here, but any change to him would require a rebalance to the entire game.
  • Misc nitpick: the poison corpses cannot be disarmed. That’s not a mechanic. So why is it an explicit option in the game when it’s not used anywhere else?
  • Misc nitpick: Pietrek literally only dies if you find his crashed rocket. If you don’t, the ending says he lives and the rocket works? This is complete bullshit. Visiting a location has no correlation to whether the rocket works!
  • Misc nitpick: The Chapter 1/2 break feels . . . Weird. I kinda get it and kinda don’t.

Personal Verdict, based on why I play games:

  • Story - Promises interesting things, but is ultimately vague, confusing, and unfocused. I like the surreal nature, but it needs direction.
  • Exploration - Mixed, due to being a survival game. The genre both encourages exploration with the resource limits, but also works against it with the resource costs. Didn’t feel I got to find much of interest.
  • Player Expression - Not really a thing here. There are a few choices of consequence, but they don’t seem to matter much or really be involved in the “main story”
  • Discovery - Not much? There really wasn’t much to find of interest.
  • Aesthetics - The 2D pixel nature of the game works against it for me, but the audio design and artistic style is extremely strong.
  • Emotional Invocation - Eh . . . Some? What the aesthetics and tension brought in spades was frequently counteracted by the constant frustration that went with just the general slowness and awkwardness of play

And thus I bury Darkwood. It had more promise than I gave it credit for, even if it failed to live up it. I feel a little bad bashing it because it’s like 3 devs total. I was even kind of rooting for it at certain points. If they built a bigger studio with some more bandwidth/design chops I’d probably give the next game the time of day, though.