Dark and Deep
Review
A Unique and Impactful Horror Experience
by Jordan Helsley
reviewed on PC
Seeds Of Mystery
Samuel Judge is a man at the end of his rope. A dead end IT job, despite his best efforts at VIT, living with his mother just to get by, and the only remaining fan of a once-popular conspiracy podcast, as far as he and his online friend, TruthSeeker, can tell. And now he's in the back of a panel van, driving on a snowy mountain road. A body is lying on the floor, bagged and duct taped, with many screens, polaroids, and other paraphernalia scattered around him, serving as his only vague clues. An episode of Dark and Deep is playing on the computer, a podcast that will follow him through his upcoming experience. It tells the story of the struggles of an upstart conspiracy hunter, dead end investigations and death threats, before shifting topics. It's now speaking of a mysterious driver, of a black panel van, of its escape from a violent crime. As the van veers off a cliff, with a mysterious woman looking upon his fate, the host asks the pointed question: Who is Samuel Judge?
Dark and Deep sets an effective stage. Before you're given the ability to move, before you're even told definitively that you are Samuel Judge, you're introduced to something equal parts mysterious and sinister. Over the next four-ish hours, new mysteries will come and go, but the backbone of the adventure is built in those opening minutes. It also lays the groundwork for the tone of the experience and reinforces it immediately after. The next scene finds you walking down a black and white hallway. Sporadic windows allow sunbeams through the blinds, highlighting artwork on the opposite walls. When you look at the art, as you are wont to do, the game plays its first hand: there's a shadow behind yours, following your every step. A shadow of your shadow, invisible to the naked eye. This simple yet spooky moment was just as effective on subsequent visits to this same hallway as it was the first time, and prepares you for the game's primary mechanic used to solve puzzles and stay alive.
An Artistic World
This black and white space is as beautiful as it is oppressive. Even with the simple art style, the Gustave Doré influence (something the game isn't shy about) is striking. The way the landscape captures the line work of his pieces (you must forgive me, I'm no art scholar, I can't go any deeper than that) creates a unique and illustrated underworld. It is the type of art that invites you to live inside of it, even as horrors await or accost you. The utter silence that accompanies most of your time here adds to the dread that is reminiscent of the artist's Divine Comedy illustrations. The loading screens feature Dante Alighieri and John Milton quotes; Dark and Deep knows what it's doing.
You'll spend a lot of time viewing this world through one of several frames, see-through art frames that will reveal to you certain aspects of the unseen world based on which shape and design you're holding. They're used to solve some puzzles and get bits of collectables that chronicle the journey, but mostly they're for engaging in the closest approximation of combat that the game achieves. In this desolate, surreal, and black and white world exist hints of colour. Aiming your frame at them will pull those echoes into a state where you can interact with them. Sometimes they're pools of energy that allow you to grab a helpful item, and other times they're sketches, somewhat rudimentary drawings that depict Sam dealing with geography or beast. Most of the puzzles are just obscure enough to test your brain, and a mostly useful help function is just a button press away, but once or twice I ended up in situations that I felt the game didn't explain as well, or even in the same way, as the rest, and the hint wasn't helpful.
Revealing The Horrors
Primarily, you will hold these frames at arm's length to get a look at the monsters either stalking you or lying in wait. To the naked eye they're nothing but puffs of dust or shadows on the walls, but using the frame as a scope, and focusing on the newly revealed foes for a time, you can banish them from your path. It's a fine mechanic, as you're motivated to switch between the frames you've collected to reveal a certain type of enemy, or combat a certain type of trap, but it falls apart in the amount of precision it requires. The reticle of your frame is a non-diegetic dot, a handful of pixels in total. If that dot isn't directly on a monster, and occasionally on a certain part of that monster, the timing mechanic doesn't activate and you're left scratching your head. Occasionally you need to be quick with this action: they're attacking a machine you need to protect to progress, or your very person with intent to kill. It's an inconsequential concern, because the fail-states aren't particularly punishing, but just a little bit more grace in the precision is required to make it feel truly satisfying. Fortunately, even with that amount of consequence, the progress of the timing doesn't reset if you lose track of your target, so you can correct.
Throughout the game, players explore various differentiated ways to play with this mechanic, but I won't spoil those here. What I will say is that this very light element of combat makes the entire adventure feel a bit more engaging, and while the precise nature of the aim can lead to a bit of frustration, it eliminates some of the overall frustrations you can get from non-combat horror games that turn the act of surviving an encounter into something obscure. Clearly delineated rules mean you just have to execute.
Satisfying Answers Among Cryptic Podcasts
Some choices made by the developer really shine more than some others. Not only is there an easier, more accessible mode that makes enemies less frequent and damage less significant, but there's also a very cool "unlock all checkpoints" button. If you're feeling stuck at any point, you can skip forward and continue the story. Both contribute to creating a friendlier experience in a genre that is rarely known for such a thing.
Dark and Deep also has a singular level towards the end that feels so meticulously designed to maximize the fright that its existence alone makes me excited for the next thing that the developer puts out. It's a simple premise: you're navigating a maze. The first few attempts ended in failure, but once the mechanics clicked into place, it was nothing but joy. You're hurrying to stay out of the shadows, you're chasing light. Creatures lurk in the darkness. You can hear them and you can feel them. There's a voice in your ear, giving you story details as you get closer and closer to a pivotal story moment. There are a few key pieces of level design that speak to you as the player to lead you on your way. It all felt so natural. Contemporary horror games are chasing cheap scares with realistic graphics, but Dark and Deep is able to create thrilling moments of terror with far less visual flair, simply because there's a unified vision of the experience and realistic execution to realize that vision.
Developer Walter Woods, in an almost entirely solo effort, has made a horror experience that easily comes more highly recommended than many of those from teams a hundred times larger or more. A lot of that has to do with the cohesion of the world, storytelling, and gameplay. As the story drew to a close, I felt disappointed that I wouldn't get to see the game continue its upward trajectory. But as credits rolled, I couldn't help but feel happy with the experience as a whole. The faults in Dark and Deep are inconsequential enough that mentioning them almost happens as an afterthought (not to mention that they're almost universally a potential patch away from not existing). The notable moments, though, are at the absolute minimum the bar that horror games should aim for.
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9.0
fun score
Pros
Engaging story, beautifully designed worlds, and restrained but effective horror in a package that is customizable to the type of experience you want to have
Cons
This game’s version of combat is precise to the point of occasional frustration, and the clarity of the puzzles fluctuates just enough to break the pacing sometimes.
