The Guilt and the Shadow
So, this is yet another gloomy indie game about psychological disorders.
There’s little to say about this one. In its own genre it’s probably OK. The visuals are stylish and the sound design is quite awesome.
But the story doesn’t really catch your attention. The monologues and occasional dialogues are quite unnatural. And the gameplay part just plainly sucks. You walk slowly, you need to backtrack the levels all the time, it’s surprisingly hard to find a proper spot to start climbing a ladder. So, all in all, as a game this thing kind of fails.
– Real player with 8.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dark 2D Games.
An emotional experience about the torments of a man plagued by the “guilt” of his mother’s suicide (“shadow”).
Set in a black and white pencil drawn world, the player guides the mentally ill protagonist through a succession of dreams/nightmares.
To advance in the game, we have to solve simple puzzles to unblock passageways or unlock memories.
The pace is slow, giving the time to the player to immerse itself in the dark atmosphere of the game. And the game can be finished in one setting, which I would recommend in order to not lose the connection to the story.
– Real player with 5.3 hrs in game
Tormentum - Dark Sorrow
This game is dark, despondent, despairing and depending on how one defines horror, it could be that too. A point and click not so adventurous “adventure” game. (Adventure because it does fall into any other catergory, not really, other then maybe supernatural. But even that would be a stretch.) Has a moralistic tone of more right vs wrong, then good vs evil.
Story: The condemned arrives with a fellow prisoner at a castle specifically designed for torture, torment, and purging souls of their evil through pain, suffering, and grief. (Dark, very dark, in tone.) The condemned man is told this in his jail cell by the horned guard, who also informs the condemned man he (the guard) will back to torture him. Of course, the condemned man does not wait around for that. This begins the journey through the Hell-bound castle, and meeting its various denizans. After that it is a trip though the wastelands, dealing with the inhabitants, and eventually to the condemned man’s goal, a structure of uprised arms with a shrouded female statue inside. Ethical choices are made throughout, in the simply question kill or not kill.
– Real player with 9.5 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dark 2D Games.
Awakened behind the twisted metal bars of your cell suspended far above the earth, a magnificently gnarled airship humming ominously above as it carries our mysterious hooded protagonist from their unknown past to a hellish new reality behind the confines of a massive and ghastly prison complex. Will you give in to your new existence of demonic incarceration, or will you find the will to journey into the pits of hell itself and find your freedom?
Tormentum is not a tale for the queasy, with brutal depictions of death, despair, and torture the imagery within is enough to make the average modern horror fan piss their pants in terror. The game comes from a seriously engaging and tasteful angle despite this, and everything is done in a fictionally compelling way that serves the narrative and not just for the sake of shock. The core element in Tormentum is atmosphere, and its surreal influences show to the very root.
– Real player with 9.4 hrs in game
DARK SOULS™: REMASTERED
What Dark Souls is not:
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the hardest game of all time
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in any way polished (even in the remaster)
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remotely functional as a game
What Dark Souls is:
- one of the most interesting, inventive, atmospheric action RPGs ever created
This is my favourite game of all time, but it’s not for everyone. It’s less about tight, high-octane action and flashy spectacles and more about atmosphere, exploration and trying to make head or tail of a game that does a lot of things and refuses to explain any of them. That or just breaking the game’s mechanics until you ascend to godhood.
– Real player with 510.9 hrs in game
Read More: Best Dark Action RPG Games.
The first dark souls game. ‘Remastered’ Note, I don’t agree with them taking down the prepare to die edition.
Pretty good PVE and fun but imbalanced PVP.
PVP is a backstab fest and heavy armor/poise is meta. You’ll sometimes see Mask of the Mother, Havel/Giant armor and great club using tryhards who will kill you in one backstab. Backstabs are very latency and connection based. However the PVP is still a blast when fighting people with more normal builds. It’s flawed but good fun.
PVE is the more well done part of the game. Only complaint really is that you start off in New Game plus once you kill Gwyn, you don’t have the option to not go into new game plus like in Dark Souls 2.
– Real player with 223.7 hrs in game
Pale Cachexia
Beautiful Sadness
Lonely. This is the first word that greets you when you start Pale Cachexia. Alone in the dark wood. The contrast between forest’s spring awakening and “ghostly gloom” of the night, with “rustling sounds of crickets”, nocturnal creatures and “ominous howls”, the feeling that someone is breathing right behind you while you venture among the endless unmoving trees - all set the mood of the VN right from the start and mark it as decidedly Gothic and Romanticist. With a sense of crippling loneliness and smallness the main character Esther stumbles through this vast, misty forest in search of a cure for her terminal illness, and finds herself in a gloomy Gothic manor, almost like she just stepped into a dream.
– Real player with 12.5 hrs in game
Short Review:
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Kinetic visual novel (no choices)
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Complexity in story and characters
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Heavy topics of death, illness, grief, guilt, and loneliness
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Somewhat open ending
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Nice art, including unlockables
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Soundtrack that perfectly enhances mood
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Overall an atmospheric, emotional story I enjoyed!
Full Review:
What an atmospheric, emotionally complex story. This kinetic novel (visual novel without any choices) has elements of horror and fantasy, and there are some creepy parts, but it’s mostly mysterious and melancholic, dealing with the heavy topics of death/dying, illness, grief, guilt, and loneliness.
– Real player with 8.7 hrs in game
Stela
First impression: It has flesh-eating bugs (instead of rats like in Plague Tale) to oversized Gollum and a pyramid-shaped Tet that zaps you into “Oblivion” (movie with the same name)
Well, I’m kinda fond of the atmospheric, minimalistic game that’s has a puzzle/maze element and this one makes no exception. However, this particular puzzle-platformer has a lot to desire compared with other similar games I played before. Visually, Stela is a striking atmospheric game in a side-scrolling format but technically it’s low-poly though enough care has been put into the visuals and environments where they all feel alive.
– Real player with 3.6 hrs in game
B-E-A-UTIFUL! That was the first thing that sprang to mind when I delved into STELA.
From the barren wastelands of fields to the cold and desolate snow-swept landscapes, STELA is absolutely caked in artistic imagery. Everything is designed with a keen eye and attention to detail.
This is particularly important as, much like games such as Limbo and Inside (which this game will no doubt draw comparisons to) there is no dialogue to tell the story. Much of what you gleam of this tale is from the images presented to you. Without spoiling anything, much of what this story entails is told from pillars found throughout the game.
– Real player with 3.4 hrs in game
There Is No Light
After a global catastrophe, the remains of human civilization built a new religious society among the ruins of the desolated underground. They have forgotten the light of the sun and now are blindly following the New God — The Great Hand. Once every few years, The Hand comes down to the people of the Central Station and takes away the chosen newborns to the world hidden behind the gates of the Sanctuary. The Hero embarks on a dangerous journey through this hostile world to find a way to open the gates and bring his child back.
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Atmospheric pixel art world
A vast, detailed and beautiful pixel art world to explore.
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Unique combat system
Adjust your fight style for every foe and boss by switching between 4 main weapons on the go.
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Thrilling and emotional story
A deep and touching 30-hour long storyline about a family, war and redemption awaits you.
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70+ Types of enemies and bosses
Be prepared to slaughter hundreds of dreadful monsters and bosses!
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1000+ Dialogues and Karma system
Non-linear narrative helps to build a branching story with meaningful choices that will impact the world according to the player’s decisions.
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Useful skills to upgrade your weapons
A massive skill tree for every weapon allows you to build your own fighting style.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1132980/There_Is_No_Light/
No Hope
Excellent 90-minute classic-style survival horror. It is occasionally possible to get softlocked if you aren’t efficient enough, but starting over isn’t a huge deal– the game is fairly short and fast once you know the route.
– Real player with 1.6 hrs in game
I played this while nah good drunk bruh holding dicc my hand jelqing my wife recommend ludonarrative restaurant this dude still doesn’t know how to say thai femboi hooters GOTY while I pooping twerking ass yes booby trap wtf quitter Panda sucks ass for Alpha Alkes milking simp for them reach-around the bellybutton boobas mammoth dancing durian full moon epistemological message deleted by a moderator snow is gay Mizo Vpanda is quitter swag.
– Real player with 0.4 hrs in game
Tormentum II
Tormentum II, a long-awaited continuation of the dark adventure game inspired by the works of H.R. Giger and Zdzisław Beksinski, will appear on the Steam platform in 2019.
In 2019, thanks to the Polish studio OhNoo, the door to the dark world of Tormentum will open again. Tormentum II is a Point & Click adventure game taking place in a dark, surreal world full of gloomy characters and repulsive creatures taken straight from the scariest horrors. The hand-drawn graphics, referring to the work of outstanding painters such as H.R.Giger or Zdzisław Beksiński, will take care of the one-of-a-kind impressions that spice up the players with shivers.
This time the adventure will begin in the future - in a universe where computer games bring relief in a hopeless world devastated by technology. Players will lead the fate of a game creator whose ambition is to create what has never been achieved before - a world inhabited by characters with intelligence equal to that of a human being.
When one day he receives a mysterious package with a strange processor, worrying visions begin to haunt him. Reality mixes with a nightmare, and characters from the game begin to penetrate his world. Or maybe it’s the other way round…
He decides to place a mysterious processor in his computer. From that moment nothing is certain anymore, and he himself becomes a prisoner of his own creation.
He wakes up in prison on an island in the middle of the sea and starts exploring the world he has created. However, he turns out to be different from his imagination - much less friendly, much more aggressive. However, one thing puzzles him the most: the characters he encounters tell him about a god who lives on one of the most remote islands. About a god who has never been in his game, which he himself has not created.
Players will be able to get to know the huge dark world stretching to several islands. Full of secrets and rich in various creatures. In order to find his way home and find a mysterious god along the way, the protagonist will have to travel through a vast land, which will consist of more than 130 locations - twice as many as in the first part of the adventure.
While wandering around the world, players will encounter situations in which game developers will question their conscience, forcing them to make often ambiguous decisions affecting the fate of the characters they meet. Thanks to such a procedure, the linearity of the game will be disturbed, which will enable more than one ending, depending on the choices made by the protagonist.
The unique atmosphere accompanying the game will be emphasized by a unique musical setting, this time enriched with metal sounds.
Grim Dawn
This is one of the best Action RPGs ever made.
You will not regret buying this, especially on discount which occurs pretty often.
The developer, Crate entertainment, supports this game even now, even when everyone thought the game reached its pinnacle of updates and polishing, there was a patch with tons of pages of fixes & changes for the better recently.
No microtransactions, no stealthy practices, this developer is simply what every other developer should be. And every expansion is massive and adds tons of content for the price.
– Real player with 660.2 hrs in game
To me the most atmosphereic of the ARPG games. I am weird but I just was never into D2 very much and I had the disk version and got the missing DLL bug after about 6 months..
But back to GD. Of course there is a grind. And I use that word properley because you are gonna have to do the same areas more than once to handle other areas. not too bad though. The sound is great, I LOVE the music but some dont. The effects are top notch imo. The graphics are gorgeous imo. But I dont own any next gen games so…
– Real player with 364.1 hrs in game
Need a packet?
There’s a large chance that this game simply fits within my own niche of interests extremely well. I really do like this project a lot for what it is! an experience, and art. The cash registry is really fun too once you get in a rhythm. I think it does a good job of displaying a descent from what I’ve seen, though while the atmosphere is dreary and holds an important message about antipollution, but it doesn’t exactly feel heavy y’know. Very close though! And I love all the surrealist energy!
Personally my biggest gripe with the game is simply the easy mode. I understand the, feeling that was being gone for with it. But ultimately, having it in a way where it’s a completely different experiences and eliminating a core gameplay mechanic, (the bullet hell), it just feels like whoever needs, or simply just wants to play the easier mode, is being excluded y’know ? Personally I’d suggest a way to opt in and out of these things but, that’s just one solution.
– Real player with 4.3 hrs in game
I purchased Need a Packet because I watched Markiplier try it out a while ago, and he had a very negative reaction to it at the time, but the visuals were so compelling that I had to come and try it out myself. And I’m glad that I did! I haven’t finished the game yet, but so far Need a Packet is a challenging game, with great artwork and music, and a compelling story! The mechanics are interesting too, switching between you being a cashier and giving packets to people, and defending the transport you take to work against giant demons and the like, it all getting progressively more difficult as the game goes on.
– Real player with 3.1 hrs in game