Darkwood Does Horror From the Top

Andy Chalk

One Flag, One Fleet, One Cat
Nov 12, 2002
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Darkwood Does Horror From the Top

From the shadowy realm of Poland comes Darkwood, an indie survival-horror game that approaches the genre from a slightly different perspective.

Can top-down horror work? I don't know, but with first-person games cluttering up the genre, it's nice to see somebody trying something a little different. And while it might not be "hide in a corner and pray" kind of scary, Darkwood does look like it has some real potential as an atmospheric survival-horror experience.

Darkwood promises "hardcore gameplay" with "no hand-holding, tooltips or linear paths" in a procedurally-generated and deeply twisted world. Characters will improve with perks and abilities and a crafting system will help improve the odds of survival, but if you do happen to die, you're really and truly dead: Permadeath makes reckless behavior a bad idea. And it's not about zombies! While there will be enemies similar to zombies, there are plenty of other dangerous creatures as well, each with their own "characteristic behaviors and goals."

The gameplay trailer doesn't show off anything particularly horrifying but the ambiance looks great, especially for a "pre-alpha," and the promise of a survival-horror RPG/rogue-like crossover set in a well-defined, real-time world is hot stuff indeed. It's being made for Windows, although Linux and Mac versions may be developed as well if the crowdfunding campaign, which isn't yet underway, brings in sufficient funds; the same holds true for co-op multiplayer.

Details about Darkwood can be found at Steam Greenlight [http://www.darkwoodgame.com/] and while I would never presume to tell you what to do, you should definitely vote for it.


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Ukomba

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Oct 14, 2010
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Nice. I hope they do manage to give it a co-op. Would be fun to play with my wife.
 

DrunkOnEstus

In the name of Harman...
May 11, 2012
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It's like someone scavenged my mind for video game ideas. There's not enough roguelike RPGs and not enough horror games. I pre-bought the new Slender and I'm sure as hell gonna try to Greenlight this at the very least. Now we just need A Machine for Pigs to not suck and I wont be leaving my house for awhile.
 

Falterfire

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Jul 9, 2012
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Top-down Horror? Is that not what FTL is? I'm certainly always horrified at how many different ways my ship and its crew can take terrible, terrible damage.
 

KoudelkaMorgan

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Jul 31, 2009
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This looks interesting. Hopefully the art assets get beefier in the end of development. The generator's portrait was rather surprising as it looked good compared to the fairly plain rest of the graphics. The sound was good though.

I'd rather have a Shadowgate/Uninvited survival horror game than this, but as no one is making one of those this is a cool concept.

You could probably make a fairly decent Fatal Frame/Siren knock off with a top-down simplified graphics approach. Its like gauntlet only with more than a mousefart's worth of subtlety and nuance.
 

Jamous

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Apr 14, 2009
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Yessss good. Sounds pretty fun. Has this been done often before? It's not a concept/game style I'm particularly familiar with. The two concepts (horror and tp-down) don't usually go hand in hand. Oh well, very much looking forward to it all the same.
 

Moonlight Butterfly

Be the Leaf
Mar 16, 2011
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Voted for it, looks awesome.

Love me some creeptastic indie. I hope they add a female character. (mostly for the multiplayer)
 

Chris Visser-fee

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Apr 20, 2013
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It's not "hide in the corner and pray" scary? Really? That's a perfect description of what you do every time night arrives! That's... that's a description of half the game! What?