Dev.log Silver

Dev.log option 2B

This week I played a top down horror game called Darkwood, by Acid Wizard Studio. It's available on Steam. It takes place in a strange sort of apocalypse where endless trees continue to grow and separate civilization, driving people into madness and desperation. Players scavenge for supplies and come nightfall, prepare to fight in a crumbling structure.

   One of the things that struck me as a player was that Darkwood is successful in using a top down perspective in horror, which is pretty uncommon these days. normally this perspective might feel limiting, but text appears above characters heads, even through walls to simulate hearing distance. Lighting carries out through windows to show the player things running past in the darkness, leaving the player hiding in the corner. The world is big enough to feel like a full experience but the the walls of trees and overgrown/ warped things conveys the mood well.

    I'm amazed at how the ambient lighting system interacts with things at night to produce strange alien shapes in the darkness. Although we as the protagonist cannot see through walls, we players can, it adequately gives us the atmosphere of what the protagonist feels, the encroaching inky black forest trying to flood inside. Sometimes there isn't anything there at all, but with the sounds one hears outside, the imagination does terrible things to me. I hope to convey to players in my horror games the sense of being watched and followed, and surrounded even when nothing is there the way Darkwood does.

   One thing I hope to avoid is the sense of boredom and general misdirection I feel while playing. I have a lot of tense fun while creeping around the house at night, seeing enemies move furniture out of the way and throw doors open as they search for me and climb in through windows, but ultimately I don't know how to advance th e plot. The key items I find, that seem to have codes or relevant information are only visible once. There isn't a menu to see them again, so if that code was for a supply cache, oh well. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to be doing after a while and boredom skyrockets. I got tired of fighting enemies in daylight only to find nothing, and struggling to find NPCs. While the ever-present night fall forces me to stop what I'm doing as being in darkness at night will kill the player instantly sometimes. It begins to feel like a chore. Dream sequences that seem irrelevant also appear to be vague and convoluted. I wish this game gave me a little more direction. Still it is quite fun, and the devs have announced another update. 

Dev.log option 1

   A lot of the difficulties I had with Darkwood are summed up by the section on stagnation in chapter 11. The repetitious nature of Darkwood's night fall mechanic force me to stop what I'm doing to contend with whatever will attack me at night. Since being outside at night can be instant death in some circumstances. While I don't want to be as harsh as to say nothing is happening because NPC's come and go, strange things will happen at night and you can interact with NPCs. But I do spend most of my time in game roaming, doing something that I don't want to do, gathering.

The section on Fun Killers stands out because I think specifically of one game. I previously played Platinum Game's Bayonetta. It is a frenetic hack and slash platformer like Devil May Cry before it. It has a number of problems however some levels were punctuated with these really awful motorcycle/ rocket segments that had bad controls. I understand the devs were referencing two older games that influenced them a lot, but these segments really should have been optional. The game doesn't let you spend enough time doing what the game is actually about: beating up evil angels. no matter how many times I play it, I dread those stages. It's supposed to be a hack and slash game, not an arcade racer/ flyer.

So because I worked on Noita for my last project, I've been playing a lot of it. It's given me time to think about why I keep coming back to a game that shouldn't be fun. I think it's because of what's said in the section construction/ destruction in chapter 11. Building wands and using them to destroy is my favorite part of the game. It has maybe the best weapon crafting system I've seen in a game, but it is locked away behind random number generation and gated by having to find them in each game. There isn't a sandbox mode where I can feely make what I want. I feel the game needs this opportunity. However it's lack thereof hints at something the devs are hiding. I've noticed that some combinations of things in game don't quite work. The lack of a sandbox mode is hiding that the spell system despite being extensive already, is unfinished and with each update may never be.