![]() When sounds break this relative since, it’s incredibly effective. The only noise during these levels are the shuffling footsteps of Lloyd. Some levels in this game are almost entirely silent with no backing music or sound effects. The tension in Darq is built up by a masterful mix of visuals, sound and design. After all the tension that’s built up throughout Darq, this final section instead feels like a truly cathartic release. You’ll die often here until you’ve fallen foul of each pitfall and learnt from it but unlike other games that attempt this, this doesn’t become frustrating. This is the most thrilling section of the game with the recurring characters laying out jump scare after jump scare that eventually bring a modicum of clarity to the story. Imagine Limbo but played at twice the pace. Instead of the creepy, suspense-filled puzzles, the game becomes a fast paced, danger-filled, trial and error sprint for Lloyd’s life. ![]() The final chapter of Darq becomes something different again. I just think it sticks out when the game does this among the plethora of high quality puzzles there are in Darq. The solution? To use a wrist watch as a bridge which is now miraculously 10 times the size it was when I picked it up. For example, Lloyd comes to a large hole in the path forward in which he needs to cross. I understand that this is supposed to be an obtuse game with obscure, peculiar puzzles but some of the solutions here can only be reached via trial and error. While most of the inventory-based puzzles are entertaining and enjoyable enough, this eventually became one of my biggest bugbears with Darq. ![]() A plank, for example, can be used to cross over a gap left by the crumbling of the world. You’ll find items around the world which you’ve got to use to overcome some obstacles. There’s the DNA of a point and click adventure spliced into Darq too. At times, the player is tasked to complete timed puzzles while navigating different perspectives around a room, like following a charge along a wire which runs up walls and along ceilings. Walking down a 2D slice of a street unveils all new details once the world has been rotated by 180 degrees. The best example of this is during a chapter that can be entirely rotated around a central crossroads. Switches on the floor in some chapters do something similar either rotating the entire room (and gravity) or moving Lloyd deeper into the level away from the 2D slice of the world he usually navigates. Finding a puzzle difficult? Maybe it needs to be approached from a different surface. ![]() As this happens, gravity changes planes depending on the perspective of the screen. Lloyd has the ability to walk up walls or over ledges, rotating the world 90 degrees as he does so. That’s partly because of the creepy aesthetic, but mostly because of the way that Darq uses perspective. While these puzzles are traditional, their presentation is anything but. There’s a number of room sized puzzles that require Lloyd to rotate sections of the walls to ensure a wire is connected from one end of the space to the other. There’s gear shape puzzles that ask you to move a link between 2 shapes so that one end of the link can find its way into a particular hole. buttons that need to be pressed in a particular order or mazes to navigate. In the former, you’re asked to solve switch puzzles you might have seen a hundred times before e.g. The puzzles in Darq are a mix of classics with some brain teasers that are totally unique to this game. In either case, they constantly raise the questions, “what’s going on here?”, “what are you?” and “why are you hunting Lloyd?”. Instead, there’s a persistent cast of weird beings that stalk Lloyd though the game, either from the shadows, appearing just out of view only to disappear, or as part of Darq’s lattice of puzzles to overcome. There are dream diaries that expand on the intentions of the plot but they’re very well hidden (I had to use a guide to find 3 of them) and don’t explicitly explain anything. There’s no moment to moment story line or dialogue to follow as Darq allows the player to make their own interpretation of what’s going on. The first 5 chapters of the main game all begin as the main character Lloyd (a bald gangly man with a serious case of panda eyes) gets into a bed and is then transported to twisted locales from which he needs to escape, back to his bed. The plot to Darq is intentionally ambiguous and it’s all the better for it.
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