There is a tense chase scene as well, but even this is less about quick reflexes than strategically assessing the environment to use it to your advantage, which will surely involve a few deaths and checkpoint-restarts to achieve. ![]() (If you think that sounds bizarre, wait’ll you get a load of the creature in a wheelchair with a tuba for a head.) With conveniently-placed cubbyholes to hide in, however, these sequences are generally more a matter of patience than skill, though at times a deft hand is needed to sneak more quietly than usual – a task much easier to accomplish with a gamepad than the keyboard. A bit of stealth is necessary on occasion too, as you attempt to evade a shambling zombie-like creature and women in bathing suits with lampshades for heads. Some inventory objects have obvious uses and some less so, but the self-contained areas and automatic hotspot highlights combine to keep the possibilities manageable. There are items to collect as well, including disembodied arms and legs that seem to have a mind of their own. Some obstacles even require quick timing to engage part of a puzzle on one level and finish on another, such as keeping a fuse lit as it winds its way around you in all three dimensions, being forced to start over if the connection is broken. More prominent are a number of rotating tile puzzles to form electrical connections, which start out simply but later become interwoven with the scene-shifting ability to dramatically increase their complexity. Complicating matters are a few traditional logic brainteasers like a slider and a two-sided magnet maze that offer no instructions whatsoever. A lever you need may be visible on the ceiling or across an impassable gap, but it’s not immediately clear how to even reach it, or perhaps get it to reach you. Many of the puzzles are based around navigating confined but spatially-labyrinthine 3D environments to accomplish your objectives. It’s a great trick that is as simple conceptually as it is difficult practically to wrap your brain around in the moment. As you progress, this power becomes more three-dimensional, allowing you to twist the scene – or even just part of a room – side-to-side and front-to-back, although only ever at predetermined places. At first this is purely in a clockwise or counter-clockwise direction, such that you’ll find yourself walking along what moments earlier were walls or ceilings or impassable pits. To call this a “side-scroller” is both accurate and misleading, as you can only walk along a horizontal plane but the main gameplay conceit is the ability to rotate the landscape in 90-degree increments. From here the goal is simply to get to the “end” of the nightmare and trigger a return back to the house, only to repeat the sequence all over again another six times in whole different settings with new challenges. ![]() Cue the first dream, as the protagonist undergoes an out-of-body experience with the backdrop twisting into a whole new environment around him. You simply take control of a lanky, bald, almost uncomfortably skeletal young man in his dilapidated house, with nothing to do but crawl into bed and sleep. Reminiscent of other puzzle-platformers like Limbo and INSIDE, DARQ is a thoroughly enigmatic adventure that starts with no preamble or introduction of any kind. The only thing this experience has that my own nighttime imaginings do not is one heck of a landscape-altering gimmick and a variety of puzzles that are reasonably diverting and yet begin to wear out their welcome despite the brief 2-3 hour runtime. That’s exactly how I felt while playing this game. There’s a degree of lucidity to my dreams that lets me relish them as I sleep even the bad ones don’t end with a sudden lurch and a case of the cold sweats, but rather a sense of wonder and appreciation of the absurdities my subconscious mind has conjured up. ![]() By that I don’t mean the scariest, but rather the one that most feels like a real nightmare, from its surreal presentation to ever-changing environments to largely nonsensical story – and yes, a few chilling moments of horror. Unfold Game Studios’ DARQ is probably the most nightmarish adventure game I’ve ever played. Note: Since time of writing, two free DLC levels have been released, The Tower and the Crypt, offering new settings, puzzles, mechanics, and a solid 1-2 hours of additional gameplay.
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