Cosmic horror ‘Dark and Deep’ is inching closer and closer to release and I had a chance to give it a whirl. Made by solo developer Walter Woods (indie dev and professor at the Savannah College of Art and Design), Dark and Deep will take players through the shoes of an IT guy whose got a lot of issues—creepy crawlers and government secrets taking focus. The game takes place in the first person and has you primarily interact with your environment through frames, each one able to do different tasks.
Now I’m not a fan of horror and I think that’s a generous way of putting it. What I mean to say is that even the slightest bit of horror in a non-horror title (or unintentional horror) is enough to have me screech and ALT+F4 faster than you can blink. Dark and Deep terrified me for the hour I could stomach being frightened, but outside of being creeped out I’d like to reflect on some of the cool ideas Walter has implemented into this demo, along with some gripes. Speaking of which, you can even give it a whirl if you’d like right now—click here to check out the game’s Steam store page.
So as I was saying, Dark and Deep has you start off in the back of a van driving off somewhere. There’s a computer blaring out something about government secrets, PC parts strewn about… But more importantly, there’s a body bag in front of you and it’s not exactly empty. Moments later, the van drives off a cliff and we’re chucked out with it. You end up in a cavern that’s covered in striped-shaped layers all over the place along with a floating frame. Once you pick up that frame, however, it’s not long before a white-haired lady chucks you (again!) off deeper into the cavern, all by your lonesome self.
Dark and Deep primarily plays on psychedelic visuals and level design. The world blends between oddly shaped rock caverns to your humble abode and whatever seems to be going through your mind. Its accentuated by strong white and red lighting oftentimes, which helps signpost your way through the adventure. But what’s notable about Dark and Deep is that your playable character is a heavy man. Movement is very grounded, imagine trying to control your own two feet with WASD keys sort-of heaviness. Which largely works great, believe it or not, as I think this really gets the player to become more comfortable with their playable character—get into those shoes and the horror gets freakier.
Your brief puzzle solving and ‘combat’ is done through picture frames. These frames identify points of interest in the world and also give a bit of background details on what’s going on. Cryptically of course. The story also advances through brief respites at computers found as you carry on straight. Here you listen to your favourite podcaster whittle on away about investigations into the paranormal while a friend chats you into doing something fishy. Like many horror protagonists, you come with your own set of baggage that can be exploited.
I said everything scares me and I mean it. Dark and Deep uses shadows in a clever way that showcases the threats that are chasing you as well as other forms of symbolism. In this case, a bunch of freaky crawlers will hunt you down whenever you carry an ember and these embers are necessary to progress through these terminals that block your path. Said terminals also work very slow and you’ll need to play tower defence against these crawlers with your combat frame while waiting for the impeding rocks to get moved. If these crawlers get to the terminal and take away your precious ember, you’ll have to start over.
This gets slightly annoying as crawlers sometimes fell outside my field of view. But Dark and Deep’s worst aspect comes from its platforming. I enjoy the heft that my player character holds when moving around but that same heft makes for some tricky and sometimes very annoying jumps across what are already odd platforms. Trying to balance yourself on a pillar and jump to an oddly shaped ledge, all the while trying to make sure the whole sequence doesn’t collapse because of those wretched crawlers made for some annoying couple of minutes.
Dark and Deep offers some strong visual guidance and neat story ideas mixed in with freaky enemies from the unknown. I do think it signposts a little too hard with prompts at times—I’d rather there be more visual indicators in the world rather than being told what to do—and the platforming isn’t very fun. But the mix of conspiracies and freaky creatures of the deep is an excellent combination and the game does a great job of keeping you freaked out as often as it can. Moving body bags will never cease to make me scream for my mother.
Give the demo a try for yourself! Steam Next Fest is on the 10th, but Walter Woods’ has put up a demo for his game ahead of time. Indie horror fans should definitely delve into the Deep with this one. One last ask for the developer, a heart-to-heart if you will: please make sure pressing “escape” also resumes the game. For squeemish folks like me, I pause a lot and it’d be nice to get right back into the action after a quick sanity check.
Dark and Deep is slated to launch on PC via Steam and Xbox consoles later this year.
