DARKWOOD HIDEOUT 3 GENERATOR WINDOWS
Holing up in your hideout with the windows and doors barricaded and praying for dawn is the only way to survive nights in Darkwood.Įven then, I got killed. Only after I'd played a few hours and scavenged enough items to sell to the werewolf merchant for an axe-and then lucked into finding a shotgun stuck under a rock thanks to tips found online-did I have any success at surviving through a single day. (Weapons wear down quickly with use and need to be repaired, which requires repair kits that are as rare and precious as Faberge Eggs.) I would respawn in my hideout the next morning and proceed to do it all over again. I would get killed by a wolf or demon due to my pathetic lack of any reasonable means to defend myself. I would go out exploring at the start of every day. A stockpile consisting of a bottle of booze, three matches, and some old dog meat is worthy of a parade, and that scarcity turns the game into a tedious grind. You risk life and limb constantly-especially in the early hours, as you start with pretty much nothing-by scouring the map for caches of items that can be crafted into useful gadgets and gear, yet you rarely find anything that on its own is particularly valuable. The thrill of discovering mundane but useful objects doesn't overwhelm the pervading irritations, however. (As a side note, you can't duke it out with baddies with fists alone, as when you're unarmed, you're helpless.) The value of every scrap is so pronounced here that I was positively thrilled to score garbage like rags (bandages and wicks for Molotov cocktails) and nails (vital for weapons and for boarding up windows in the hideout). Granted, making you scrounge for supplies underlines the grim nature of the setting, and also serves as the foundation of a substantial crafting system.
Little access is provided to any sort of real weaponry instead, Darkwood offers up bits of junk in its woodpiles and crates that almost always have to be transformed into workable gadgets and weapons. There are few resources to use when battling this evil horde. Combat is very tough to avoid, even during the day. Chances are good that you'll be slaughtered if you go on any moonlight nature walks, and a mysterious affliction called The Thirst kills you around midnight if you fail to take a drink from a mystic well located just outside your rural headquarters. By nightfall, you must remain holed up in your hideout. Foes can be found all over the place at all hours (particularly in the deep woods along the map's edge beware of the smoke monsters lurking there), but the land becomes particularly perilous after the sun goes down. Those surrounding environs are loaded with murderous freaks straight out of The Hills Have Eyes, aggressive wolves, and hungry things whose very existence defies the imagination. Of course, this is easier said than done. There are no immediate goals other than to survive and search the randomly generated environments for an escape route. You play the lone survivor of some kind of apocalypse, stuck in the deep, dark woods within a dilapidated cabin that serves as your hideout. Right now, the game's frustrations outweigh its frights. Darkwood's best elements occasionally combine to make for compelling and atmospheric adventuring, but the current alpha 1.3 build is aggravating and awkward, with a deluge of iffy game mechanics that serve no purpose but to kill you early and often. Developer Acid Wizard Studio has replicated many old clichés to the letter, but the game veers away from predictability with a surreal story and setting, freakshow characters, an in-depth crafting system, and off-the-charts difficulty. Clearly, then, you shouldn't expect any relaxing moments in Darkwood, an adventure-angled experiment in survival horror currently available via Steam's Early Access program. From Robert Bloch's Lovecraftian "Notebook Found in a Deserted House" right through the Evil Dead franchise and send-ups like Joss Whedon's The Cabin in the Woods, it's always been as clear as Crystal Lake that you're as good as dead if you see the sun going down on your log abode in cottage country. If there's anything that horror has taught us, it's that being stuck overnight in a cabin in the woods really, really stinks. The review below critiques a work in progress, and represents a snapshot of the game at the time of the review's publication. While the games in question are not considered finished by their creators, you may still devote money, time, and bandwidth for the privilege of playing them before they are complete. GameSpot's early access reviews evaluate unfinished games that are nonetheless available for purchase by the public.
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