Dark and Deep is a game I have been looking forward to ever since seeing the first trailer for the game and learning it was being helmed by a solo developer. The trippy visuals and bizarre tone of the title piqued my interest. As someone who plays a lot of generic first person horror games, I am always on the lookout for something unique within the genre.
Walter Woods, who also teaches at the Savannah College of Art and Design, is the mind behind Dark and Deep. While there are clearly influences of people like Lars Von Trier, David Lynch, Gasper Noe, and Panos Cosmatos here, Woods still manages to tie all of these influences together in a way that makes the end product feel like its own unique concept.
Again, because I play so many horror games, it is rare that I actually feel fear while playing through them. While Dark and Deep did impressively manage to pierce through that layer of tolerance I have built up a couple of times, it is still not far from a perfect horror experience.
In horror games, I much prefer playing as an everyman who is in over his head and just trying to survive as opposed to some genetically modified macho super soldier. This is exactly what Dark and Deep offers, putting you in the shoes of a silent protagonist who begins the game in the back of a van, heading to an unknown destination.
Alarm bells are set off immediately by the sight before you; a body bag containing a corpse and a podcast playing from a computer divulging conspiratorial government secrets. Just as you are getting to grips with what is happening, the van veers off a cliff, sending the player plummeting into a strange looking cavern.
The Game Is Titled Dark and Deep For a Reason
Wandering through the depths below, you find a floating frame to interact with. Unfortunately, this leads to a white-haired woman appearing who pushes you even deeper into the cavern, leaving you isolated and confused.
Dark and Deep leans heavily on psychedelic visuals and disorienting level design to keep the players on their toes. Visuals shift between bizarre rock formations, visions of the main character’s home, and what appears to be the inner workings of his mind. The game often uses contrasting white and red lighting against a dark black void to help guide the player through this surreal world.
Puzzle-solving and, (using this phrase very loosely,) ‘combat’ revolve around the aforementioned picture frames that you collect. These frames help you identify key points in the environment to interact with and provide cryptic background information.
The game’s narrative progresses through periodically finding computers dotted throughout the environment where you listen to more of the podcast introduced at the top of the game as it delves deeper into paranormal. The issue with this is that it does create somewhat of a seemingly unintentional disconnect between these exposition dumps and the more ethereal sections between them.
Hello Darkness, My Old Friend
The game uses shadows cleverly to reveal the threats chasing you along with other elements. While this does help to induce a feeling of paranoia that the game’s freaky crawling enemies are constantly on your tail, it is also very obviously used to help hide several of the game’s technical shortcomings. The psychedelic visuals are used in a similar fashion, mixing intentional visual trickery with poorly implemented elements.
The game’s combat that I referenced earlier can be broken down to essentially a basic tower defence challenge where you must use your trusty frame to fend off enemy creatures, while protecting a computer terminal as it clears rocks and debris blocking your path to progression. Annoyingly, the game’s somewhat awkward camera mechanics do somewhat get in the way during these segments.
Although there are issues I have with the game’s storytelling technique and combat mechanics, by far the most frustrating aspect of Dark and Deep is its platforming. The combination of confusing visuals and rather uncooperative movement controls makes balancing on narrow pillars and jumping across gaps to reach ledges something of a headache.
Despite this shortcoming, and all of the other parts of Dark and Deep that aren’t quite up to par, I still respect its ambition and I am glad that it exists. From its strong visual identity, to its unsettling atmosphere of supernatural intrigue, Walter Woods has created something here that has true potential, even if it is somewhat unwieldy at times.
Dark and Deep – 7/10
