Darkwood

Darkwood (2017) is a survival horror role-play where you must scavenge the forest to fortify your cabin ready for the strange and disturbing attacks of each night. You play by exploring the grotesque open world that changes each day then get back to hunker down in your hideout and pray for morning. The tower defence premise is well-worn, but the strange viewed-from-above visuals and inventive peculiarity of the world and night visitors make it stand out.

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The game is a simulation that throws you in at the deep end with no hand-holding or quest markers. You must survive on the basis of your skills and ability to figure things out. Each day you venture out to find what randomly generated, sinister creatures wait in the woods. Your hope is to find materials to craft weapons. Each night you must barricade yourself in, set up traps and defend yourself from the horrors.

As you progress you (very slowly) gain skills and abilities by extracting a strange essence from the mutated fauna and flora and injecting it into yourself. But with new abilities also come other unintended consequences that make survival harder.

The result is a disturbing game about holding your nerve and thinking clearly in deeply unsettling circumstances. Each of your decisions impacts Darkwood and its inhabitants as you steadily discover its secrets.

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Our examiner, Andy Robertson, first checked Darkwood 9 months ago. It was re-examined by Jo Robertson and updated 9 months ago.