I’ve had my eye on Dark and Deep ever since I first saw it in Dread XP’s Indie Horror Showcase last year. Created by solo developer Walter Woods, Dark and Deep has a distinct look and feel thanks to the inspiration Woods has drawn from 19th Century Artist Gustave Doré when crafting this horror puzzle game’s visual style.
We play as Samuel Judge who, like Woods, is a big fan of conspiracy podcasts, his favourite being Dark and Deep. We open the game in the back of a van, the podcast is playing and we are transporting what looks like a murder victim; we have been involved in the heinous act in some way and are trying to cover it up. After the van crashes, we wake up in a strange, illustrated world that seems to hold fragments of our memory.
We follow a mysterious woman who appears throughout this world but disappears right when she’s within reach – clearly linked to our crime somehow. She leads us to a frame, which allows us to reveal hidden objects and embers of light which can be used to navigate the world and also collect strange drawings which seem to reflect our past and present. The embers of light can be used to work machinery in this world, which use gravity to help us clear pathways and also create platforming surfaces. But there are creatures that seek the light, which are invisible until we pick up a second frame which allows us to see them and also kill them by looking through it before they can steal it.
Dark and Deep has a unique puzzle system. We will unlock four picture frames as the game progresses and each one does a different thing when we look through it. The third one allows us to see snakes and also prevent them from harming us as we pass and the fourth allows us to see and destroy underwater creatures. While using the embers of light to work the machinery in this world, we must also fend off the creatures honing in on it, which makes a lot of the platforming sections a lot more difficult and urgent as we either have to rush across before the creature makes it to the light and disables the machine or have to keep an eye on the machine to fend of these creatures while also trying to focus on platforming.
It’s a clever technique to bring urgency to this puzzle horror game. Another section has us picking out rubble to clear a path, brick by brick, while snakes slither around us, forcing us to continuously check on the snakes to make sure they’re not near. Dark and Deep is clever in the way it builds anxiety through this. While there are plenty of chilling and well-crafted horror moments, brought to like by the pangs of piano keys or violin strings in the eerie soundtrack (also composed by Woods), I did feel like Dark and Deep really overused its jump scares. These come in the form of the creatures springing out of the darkness at you if you didn’t spot them with the frame beforehand. The only problem is that this becomes so overused that it quickly stops being scary and more just annoying.
Story-wise, Dark and Deep focuses on the fragmented reveal of Samuel’s history and how he ended up in that van with a corpse. It starts as he’s working in a dead-end job at an IT company despite being very talented in his field. He lives with his mother and spends most of his time in his room listening to Dark and Deep. That is until his only friend, known by his online tag ‘TruthSeeker’ reaches out with a proposition.
While learning about Samuel’s history was interesting and there are a couple of twists and turns, I found the writing to be a little weak. The way Samuel swings into accepting this proposition despite its risk felt really unrealistic. And aside from a neat twist at the end, the storyline felt really predictable and wasn’t something I hadn’t seen countless times in other indie horror games. What initially drew me into Dark and Deep was its focus around conspiracy theory podcasts, and while we do listen to a few podcast pieces around this, I wish this was the focus of the story. I would have loved to hear some tales from podcasts that Woods has listened to, or at least stories inspired by them, and maybe focus the main plot on Samuel’s obsession with the podcasts – maybe trying to solve one of the cases himself or visiting areas where the podcasts are set in. For most of the game it feels like the podcasts are a secondary nature to the game’s main plot, as it’s just a case that Samuel has done something terrible, plus he listens to conspiracy podcasts.
The game’s obvious highlight is its visuals. The illustrated world is textured to look like a sketch, inspired by Gustave Doré, and it really makes Dark and Deep stand out from other games in this genre. Doré was known for black and white illustrations of mythological scenes which fits in perfectly here. In fact, when we returned to the “real world” through Samuel’s flashbacks, I thoroughly missed that chalked design. It’s not just the environment textures either, even this world is beautifully designed, showing as a system of caves featuring various objects from Samuel’s past, mixing this world and the real world together in an almost apocalyptic way.
While the soundtrack is mostly not present, which works well for horror games most of the time to build tension, it does appear during certain actions or moments and usually comes in the form of a quick piano note or some violins. The soundtrack is, again, another aspect of Dark and Deep that feels unique to this genre. The sound effects are also well used to highlight what kind of enemy is near and which frame we need to whip out. Unfortunately, the sound effects sound a little off in terms of what direction they seem to be coming from, which made spotting enemies a lot more difficult as they’re invisible so we really need to be able to rely on sound to track them.
While I liked the creativity behind the puzzles and the way we navigate this fragmented world, I think Dark and Deep has quite a few problems with bugs and could do with some further polishing after release – which luckily the developer has said he’s working on. A lot of scheduled moments, such as something happening once we’d reached the end of the section, are especially laggy. I also had this problem with the snakes where they wouldn’t stop glitching around, which made them difficult to keep an eye on with the frame. I glitched off platforms on a number of occasions which made platforming segments especially frustrating and also came across a soft lock problem right at the end of the game where I couldn’t haul myself up a ledge. I tried reloading this checkpoint multiple times and still couldn’t resolve this problem.
Luckily, Dark and Deep allows you to unlock all the checkpoints in case your save is lost during an update, so I was able to skip ahead to the next checkpoint in order to finish the game. It does often feel like the controls aren’t polished enough for these platforming segments to feel satisfying, I died on a number of occasions due to the floaty jump physics. One especially strange bug was a puzzle section in the catacombs which just didn’t happen. I was moving through the catacombs on a boat and was warned that spirits would start breaking free of the tombs and that I would have to pick out the frame that matches the symbol on the tomb to seal it before this happens… it never happened. I had my frame ready as we moved through the catacombs but the scheduled event of these spirits breaking free just didn’t occur.
There are also a few design flaws in the gameplay. For one, there are no brightness settings. This became an issue a lot because I felt like the game was too dark (and deep) to see anything. A few times I got so lost that I needed to reload the checkpoint to get myself back to square one to I could try again. Other times I was supposed to aim the canon-like machine at a particular spot to shoot rubble at and clear a path, but couldn’t see where I was actually supposed to shoot because it was too dark. Dark and Deep is also missing subtitles in a lot of places which is quite a big accessibility issue. I see that a patch has been released which has added in more subtitles where they’re missing but they definitely need to be present every time someone speaks so that those who are hard of hearing don’t miss out on important story bits.
I also found it a bit irritating that the cursor doesn’t change to show when an object is interactable, instead Samuel will reach his hand out to interact with it. The only problem is, when you’re staring at a desk full of objects, it’s difficult to determine what exactly Samuel is reaching towards. Another problem is that when crouching or swimming, the key on keyboard and mouse to swim faster is the shift button, which needs to be repeatedly tapped. I don’t know about other players, but I have small fingers and it’s my little finger that rests on this key so having to repeatedly tap it while also using WASD to move was really uncomfortable. Of course, there is an option to remap this key but it’s also the one that’s universally used in games to move faster so it would be better if there were an option to hold this key rather than tap it. Another particular irritating design are certain moments where the game pretty much expects you to see into the future and know what you are doing during certain moments, otherwise you’ll die – one example of this being right at the end of the game where a creature jumps through Samuel’s bedroom window. It took me a few times to work out what I was even supposed to do in that moment before the creature killed me.
Dark and Deep is a unique game which stands out amongs other entries in this genre thanks to its gorgeous visuals and creative puzzle elements. Unfortunately, while its performance and gameplay issues will hopefully be polished later on, its story feels weak which is a shame because its hook of conspiracy theory podcasts is what drew me towards this story in the first place. Unfortunately this takes second place to a storyline often seen in this genre of the character having a massive amount of guilt over something they’ve done so they’re taking a path of acknowledgement and learning over the sitatuon, visualised through flashbacks and trippy scenes. That being said, Walter Woods has some great ideas and I look forward to seeing what else he puts out in the future.
Jess reviewed Dark and Deep on PC with a review code.
