Well you will be. Darkwood is a top-down survival game. One of its most attractive features is how well it evokes fear in the players minds. It is not a game that resorts to petty jump scares and cheap sound effects to frighten people, instead, it manages to create an everlasting aura of horror that follows you around even after you are finished playing.

You begin as a crazed doctor, stuck in some dark woods (ha ha), obviously going insane from the unusual things that happen around these parts. Set somewhere in the Soviet Bloc – although you can infer from all the Polish newspapers and other notes that it is set in Poland – the game truly reflects the depression and despair that eastern Europe felt many years ago. Although the protagonist fights a different enemy, the ever present flora that grows through anything and everything is a brilliant analogy for the ever present body of communism that saw, heard and felt everything that went on during the Soviet era. The doctor finds a man that obviously is a stranger to these woods, and soon after his capture, you assume the outsiders role, and escape from the doctors house filled with inhumane experiments.

The games day/night cycle encourages the player to really focus their exploration. Light becomes a resource in this game just like fuel for a car. Daylight is what lets you function. The moment the sun starts setting, you better hightail it, or you will not make it back at all. The game does a great job of creating uncertainty in a way that does not make you want to check on their wiki what to do. Until you actually encounter the enemy a few times, you have no idea what you are actually up against. Rightfully so, as the protagonist does not know what is going on in these woods. As daylight fades and the moon rises, you begin hearing the distant howls and screeches of unknown creatures. The wild dogs you encountered during the day now seem like cute puppies compared to these beasts. On your first night you still have no idea what is going on, so you do what anyone would do in that situation. Get in a room with no windows, barricade the door with a wardrobe, and sit there in a corner while you whimper quietly.

The game does a good job of managing resources. Gasoline is what runs your generator, your generator makes your lights and your table saw, which lets you convert any logs you find into planks that are used to barricade your doors and windows. Everything has a price. Running your generator makes noise which attracts things. No generator means no light and then you are scared. There is no compromise. Everything that is high risk has a high reward, but if you do not risk then there will be no reward. The reality of surviving in a god forsaken place is brutal, and it is recreated in just that way. The only thing that seems to be on your side in this game are the weird, throbbing mushrooms that grow all around the place. ou can convert the mushrooms into essence, which allows you to upgrade some inherent abilities of your character; this makes you wonder whether the trio over at Acid Wizard (the development studio responsible for this game) just had a bad trip, and this was the result.

A feature that I really enjoyed in Darkwood was the lack of 360 vision, despite it being possible. Hotline Miami is another top-down game, but it features vision all around the character. There I do not mind it, as it is a rather fast paced shooter. However, Darkwood’s main strength is its ability to make all the hairs on your body stand up, as if some sense in your body is tingling and telling you to get out of there right now. The fact that you need to be aware of your surroundings at all times forces you to constantly look around you, and just like in real life, this slows you down. Again, there is no compromise. You either prioritize your safety, or the speed with which you navigate the dark woods.

Another interesting mechanic is the currency system. You do not have any sort of physical money that you can spend. Instead, at each of the vendors you may gain reputation. For this reputation you may purchase things from them. Reputation, however, does not transfer between vendors. You need to suck up to each of them individually if you want to buy what they sell.

I personally love the characters that are in the game. There are no filler NPCs. Every single one of them has a unique personality that makes you really paranoid because you have to become allies with a completely unpredictable crazy person/animal hybrid. One of my favorites is the Musician. For me, nothing will change the fact that he looks like a member of Slipknot that got lost during a tour through Europe and now he resides in his little house, his sanity long gone, dealing with life in these woods.

I truly think that Acid Wizard has mastered the art of creating fear. There are horror games that make you scared, and then there is Darkwood. A game that makes you question what really goes on at night in woods where no one goes. The setting they created blends with reality so well that even the manliest of men will have to hug their moms before going to bed after a few hours of this. For fans of exploration, resource-management, and above all fear, I cannot recommend this game enough. Darkwood is only in alpha at the moment, but there are already many hours of content ready to be played. Consider supporting the studio by buying their game now and being a part of its development!

Link to the Steam page