first time using tvtropes, dunno if replying to a review this old is considered necroposting (if you aren\'t bother by this, great!). nonetheless, since I\'ve just completed the game, I feel compelled to share my opinions with your review:
Your main beef against the game seems to be the crafting system, and how resources are scarce to come by, which I respectfully disagree. I found the map size fitting enough for the player\'s average movement speed (which equates to sprinting almost all the time - stamina regenerates quick) and managed to amass a bunch of woods, nails and gas after 2 days of foraging (the former two can be found in abundant wood logs). This is greatly helped by the lack of threatening enemies in the starting biome, for which a weapon is not needed (or the starting weapon would be enough to dispatch such enemies) if you play your cards right (looting minor areas, baiting enemies, play decoy). The game\'s approximate pinpoint system is another thing to get used to, but it\'s not a big issue once you get used to it - the abundance of locations helped you get a good grasp (there is, by the way, a skill to mitigate this as well - as in pinpointing your precise location). Basically, this seems more to be you finding the movement speed not to your own tastes, influencing your counter-bias against the general gameplay loop.
Regarding the \"lack of handholding\" bit, this could be another case of missing out crucial telegraphs the game gives out during prologue and the first days (it even says focus is an important element during loading). During prologue, you learn the basics of movement, inventory, crafting, navigation and combat. On your first day, upon inspection of oven, you learn that it is crucial to play fortress holdout with the woods, and cooking is somehow important - mushrooms are positioned around hideouts to reflect this. The oven and journal (via minor Interface Spoiler) will clue you in on the fact that there are skills you can use. Inspection of workbench will reveal you can hoard and craft more shit in there, and so on. You don\'t need having a wiki opened at all as long as you pay attention to your surroundings, which, granted, could be hard in a game like this.
I like this game, and I agree on it being slow as fuck, the world being overly hostile and bleak. However, I feel using slowness to pegging down the other gameplay aspects is a bit unfair, especially since you may have a better affinity towards fast-paced games, as suggested throughout your review with your constant mention of speed. If you somehow decide to pick this game up again, perhaps take the game for what it is and gently immerse yourself into it.
Hi there, I think it may be considered a bit of a necroing, but I\'m honestly not sure. My gripes were less about the speed itself, and more how, at least from my point of view, the gameplay elements, horror x crafting, didn\'t mesh well with both gearing for survival (pun intended). The devs tried to cram too many features from different genres into a single game. The slow as molasses gameplay only made problems unbearable, as in, its not the root, but it\'s what it made it sink.
Whenever you\'re mixing genres, you need to \'calibrate\' how much each part will affect the other, and I don\'t think this game was a good example. For example, Evil Within focuses more on horror, and thus had to be slow and methodical in order to raise tension for the player. But when the second focused more on crafting, there was always a work bench close by and your character could run further and longer. The game was also pretty clear when you were about to get into a dungeon without a crafting bench there. So while it was an important part of the game, it wasn\'t its spine and the devs let go of some aspects in order to not overload the player. And even there, resources are easier to find (because they glimmer) in order to contrast with the extremely dark environments. Its not a surefire way, but its far easier than just grinding your character against furniture, and its even used to bait the player into dangerous situations.
On the other hand, Darkwood tries to make a horror game with crafting AS its spine, but can\'t let go of some horror features as already explained. Horror is more fragile than what most people expect. If you get bored, it fades, if you get frustrated, it disappears, and sadly this game ended, at least to me, being boring and frustrating. Lastly I think that if I have to go to to a minor interface spoiler as you said yourself, or check keyboard configuration to see what the character can do, I do consider it poor tutoring from the game\'s part. Especially since its something as vital as skills.
Since you just finished the game, the devs may have changed things around and made things easier or better (I don\'t recall the oven and the journal giving hints about skills, and I checked those thoroughly, I\'m methodical with surviva/horror games), and I\'m glad you enjoyed the game, but I thought it had gaping flaws that needed to be talked about.
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Niche of a niche of a niche.
For years I've heard about Darkwood, how it was a haunting experience and something superb, revitalizing the horror genre like Resident Evil 4 revitalized the franchise. I've followed a bit of the development and saw some videos of the protagonist exploring a haunted church. Finally, I got enough time and money to get it, and started playing it right away.
Everything worked very well for the horror. The top-down perspective that is limited by the line of sight and light, lack of colors, superb ambience with a really good sound direction, keeping me in my toes. The slow motion of the protagonist meant that I'd have to be careful and choose sneaking over barging in, since I couldn't run away, and the combat focused in precision hits meant that it would be better to avoid it altogether unless it was crucial.
Then I started the first day as the protagonist.
"Barricate your windows to prevent monsters from coming in." The game said. "Oh well, some tower defense elements are good. Perha-" "To make boards for the windows, you need wood and gasoline." "Wait a minute..." "Your weapon will break after five swings." "This isn't a Horror Game with Crafting Elements! This is a crafting game with horror elements!" "To make more inventory slots you'll have to craft a pouch"
And then, all elements that made this a great horror game, made it an awful crafting game. Crafting games are carefully crafted (pun intended) because of their repetitive nature. Protagonists in those games are generally fast and/or resources are close because you'll have to get back and forth, resources are colored or easy to spot, even if you're unarmed you can either easily craft a weapon or do something with your bare hands. Darkwood's protagonist is slow as molasses and runs as if he smokes five cartons per hour. If he doesn't have a weapon (which is hard to find), he can't fight at all, meaning that he shouldn't go to places with obvious enemies, eliminating part of the exploration. The shift turns less to pay attention how horrifying everything is, and 'where the goddamn hell I will find more nails?' making me lose interest in the sketchy figures running in the woods. With slow movement, exploration is already a slog, and the map won't pinpoint where the character is, and there aren't options to mitigate that, like a compass item (like Hollow Knight does), and this is a crafting game, you'll need to go back and forth due limited inventory space.
The gameplay ended absurdly slow and absolutely boring.
To make things even worse, the game boasts about 'not holding your hand', its fine, its ok. Dark Souls didn't hold your hand, just telling you 'go ring the bells' and left you to explore on your own. The problem is that this isn't a linear game, this is an open-world crafting game that by nature needs to give the player more help. And one thing is 'I won't fill your whole screen with tips, advices and an arrow' and the other is 'I won't tell you crucial details because (bleep) you' I didn't even know there were skills till after I quit the game! All this just forces the player into checking wikis, turning everything into a gigantic {{Guide Dang It!}}. I basically gave up after the first night defense, not because it was hard, but because it was so absurdly LONG AND SLOW. I nearly thought of just letting the creatures kill me to speed up the process, but just gave up. And the cherry on top of the cake is that nearly everyone you meet is an asshole, including the main character, making me stop caring altogether about the narrative.
If this is your niche, or want to try going deeper into the niche of a niche of a niche of a horror-crafting-slow-paced-wiki-based game good for you! Go ahead and enjoy the game, but for everyone else, beware the woods.