Darkwood (Survival horror)

[someone else]

Finally completed it

?

 

[Berekän]

Finally completed it

?

Did you just got back to sleep into your apartment?

Spoiler

Without finding out about the horrible truth that lies beneath the floor tiles?

 

[LESS T_T]

A tweet from September:



Also on Steam's Halloween sale.

 

[someone else]

Finally completed it

?

Did you just got back to sleep into your apartment?

Spoiler

Without finding out about the horrible truth that lies beneath the floor tiles?

The screenshot shows roots/vines in the living room, I did both endings.

 

[Boleskine]

 

[Zariusz]

For some reason, strange idea appeared in my head.
What if we had Darkwood mod for Stalker?

 

[Ash]

Buy and play this awesome game you fucking cucks.

Spoiler

Replayed this with Darkwood Hardmode at Darkwood Nexus - Mods and community (nexusmods.com)
Pretty great mod up until late game, then it goes a bit retarded. If this gets fixed it will be a must-have for returning players. For now I can't recommend it sadly. It has much potential.

 

[fork]

It's a pretty bad game tbh.

 

[Matalarata]

It's a pretty moronic statement tbh. But newfags should be allowed to embarass themselves properly, we've all been there at some point. Carry on!

 

[Riskbreaker]

I see that fork kindly offered his body for mushroom farming.

 

[HoboForEternity]

So i am playing this from halloween sale, fuck this is one of the most exhilarating survival horror ive ever played.


Got myself a wedding invitation, then got the "DANCE WITH MEEEEEEE" .

Spoiler

i couldnt kill the demon bride thing because my dumb ass brought half broken plank weapon and it broke before the hp even reach half and ran the fuck out of there.

It's not super duper scary, but the atmosphere is very tight. My only real complaint is there's bo proper resolution scaling so playing on 1440p makes everything so tiny, i have to play on 1080p

 

[HoboForEternity]

So i just found out if you drag a wardrobe into a corner, and then hid behined the wardore, it will keep you safe (so far) because NPC enemies can push, but not pull objects. Discovered this by accident when doing tug of wardrobe with invader. Doest protect you from shadows though

 

[toughasnails]

Yeah I don't think that will help you very much, afaik the monsters are p good at destroying objects like wardrobes...

I'd say that the game WAS very viscerally scary for me, the nights here are some of the most terrifying experiences in any video game. And just wait until you get to the final area of the first chapter, the game will have its way with you there alright.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Yeah I don't think that will help you very much, afaik the monsters are p good at destroying objects like wardrobes...

I'd say that the game WAS very viscerally scary for me, the nights here are some of the most terrifying experiences in any video game. And just wait until you get to the final area of the first chapter, the game will have its way with you there alright.

Yeah, i am just got to the second base (silent forest or w/e) the atmosphere is much more tense than the meadow

 

[Riskbreaker]

And just wait until you get to the final area of the first chapter, the game will have its way with you there alright.

Good lord, that zone is really hellish. Easily the hardest, most hostile portion of the whole game. Dense as fuck woods and extremely limited visibility while exploring during day, and nights of relentless, brutal onslaught. You let out a sigh of relief when you're done with that bloody place.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Wow, it's been a week and 20 hours in. This is the game i have been looking for to fill the void (pun intended) after i finished pathologic 2 in september/october 2020. It, does at least on normal difficulty, become less oppressing than p2 when you learn how to play it (at least until the 3rd base, which i got absolutely bonked by multiple chompers)


Ajy tips for the 3rd base? I am on my first night, this place is hard to defend. Multiple holes on the wall, and labyrinthine layout with not much isolated rooms to defend and the actual defendable area is really small (i am using the room with the oven, and it's hard to fight in such confined space)


But yeah, this is basically almost a top down pathologic albeit with a lot less text.

 

[Berekän]

I started getting better at night defense when I stopped being scared & hiding in a corner of my "safe" room. Lay traps over the house but be aggresive and attack before they actually get to you, if you can avoid getting cornered in a single room you should be mostly fine.

 

[Morgoth]

Never understood what people find so appealing about survival sims. Like life isn't stressful enough already.

 

[Jinn]

I really wish these guys would come out with a new game already. Or at least solidly announce something. One of the best contemporary developers out there, and they're giving me some serious blue-balls.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Never understood what people find so appealing about survival sims. Like life isn't stressful enough already.

what if life is so stressful being put in non stress situation makes you uncomfortable that the only escapism is to put yourself in stressful virtual worlds?

I really wish these guys would come out with a new game already. Or at least solidly announce something. One of the best contemporary developers out there, and they're giving me some serious blue-balls.

I actually looked up various info on reddit, it does seem they are working on something, as for 2020 from their official account on the reddit:

Hey there! Sorry for not being very communicative about what we're up to these days. To sum up, we're doing great! Szurek is a bit old and sickly, but he's hanging in there. The team is now 6 person strong in a new office.

Sadly, I can't share any specifics on what we're working on at the moment Last year, we've launched the Darkwood console version together with Crunching Koalas. We've been prototyping something new for several months but have shelved it for the time being as it's been a pretty exhausting project to work on, and will look for ways of financing it in the next few months. If all goes well, we will be able to go in full development mode in the second part of this year.

In the meantime, we're working on two other projects, but they're in their initial proof of concept stages. I'm super thrilled to be working on them, but we won't be able to share any info about them for quite a while

 

[HoboForEternity]

btw are some locations randomly placed? i watched ragnarox's video essay and in his map the wolf's camp are completely in a different place than mine.

 

[Ash]

Never understood what people find so appealing about survival sims. Like life isn't stressful enough already.

1. The majority of games revolve around survival. Survival horrors just make that shit actually count, because monocled game design.
2. It's not a survival sim. Those are indeed pretty boring. It's a game with extensively crafted encounters, events, storytelling, challenges...
3. It's not stressful. It's thrilling. Intense. Fun. Engaging. Equating it to the 9-5 grind or the general banality of modern day survival is retarded.

I can see that argument having merit perhaps in the case of actual survival sims, where you spend a in-game day building your base and scavenging for resources and otherwise not much else going on, but Darkwood really is not a survival sim. It has frequent combat and stealth, tower defense at night, meaningful inventory management, hand-crafted level design (locations) that play like traditional game levels (e.g solid scripting and design) not bland empty expanse of nothingness, and much more fine game design that makes AAA an absolute laughing stock I won't go into. Don't lump one of the best games of the last decade in with the trash based on silly assumptions.

I suppose it's no surprise the resident Bioshock fanboy doesn't recognize real game design staring him in the face.

btw are some locations randomly placed? i watched ragnarox's video essay and in his map the wolf's camp are completely in a different place than mine.

Yes, Darkwood shuffles placement of locations so that A) you can't just look that shit up like a decline tard, and B) better replayability. Locations nonetheless are largely hand-crafted.

 

[Lithium Flower]

settle down okay

 

[Fronzel Neekburm]

btw are some locations randomly placed? i watched ragnarox's video essay and in his map the wolf's camp are completely in a different place than mine.

Here's how map randomisation in Darkwood works. There is method to the madness.

Spoiler

Upon starting the game, it randomly draws one map outline from - I'm guessing here - a pool of about half-a-dozen to a dozen. Here's an example of a map outline:

The placement of primary locations on these maps is not completely random. They seem to follow a grid based pattern.

For example, in the map above, the grid would look something like this:

Everywhere a horizontal and a vertical blue line meet there is a very high probability of a primary location being placed there. On top of that, the whereabouts of primary locations seem to be set in stone for each map outline (meaning that, whatever map outline you get, the hideouts, the pig shed, whatever will always be in the exact same spot).

What DOES get changed around (and completely randomly too) are the whereabouts of the secondary locations, including the Wolfman's camp. You can tell the difference by the size of the icons on the map: large icon = primary location, small icon = secondary location. Secondary locations can end up pretty much anywhere on the map (within the biomes they're assigned to).

 

[toughasnails]

But yeah, this is basically almost a top down pathologic albeit with a lot less text.

I would say that there is less anxiety in relation to time management and survival than in Pathologic but the world itself is more oppressive and anxiety inducing than Pathologic's. And there is p much not a drop of brightness or hope to writing, it's continuous gut punches...