I'm about ten years late to this game, I didn't play a lot of horror games when I was younger because they scared me. But I'm big and brave now and I've got a couple thoughts on The Dark Descent.

The gameplay is just about, from my knowledge, what you would exactly expect from late 2000's / early 2010's horror (though I am curious if this effect might be due this game itself, aka Seinfeld Effect etc). Mainly it consists of exploring linear environments in search of solutions to puzzles and various goodies while avoiding big scary guys. The puzzles are the center limit of your exploration, and generally the big task you have to work around if you want to progress. Generally, they're never too difficult and are almost always pretty simple to figure out, as they tend to somewhat self-imply what you need to do. Those big scary guys I mentioned, however, tend to really be the true star of the show- despite how simple their behaviour seems, the camera's immediate response to seeing them and the music that plays when they appear make you run into a drastic sprint to find the nearest hiding place, leaving you desperately listening to the sounds of their shuffling footsteps, chains, and moans, the knowledge looming over you that if they make one wrong turn into the mediocre side-room you're stuck in the corner of, you're probably dead. Quite a thrill! Several mechanics exist as well to ehance this effect- your sanity means you never truly get a great look at them, and your fear of the dark pushes you forward, half-rushing your steps trying to both complete the task at hand while also racing against the burning of your lamp oil.

I really wasn't expecting the story I did. I never knew too much about the game, but I had assumed it was more or less just scary grunt man chases you in big scary fancy building, and was taken aback by the very obvious lovecraft-style influence throughout. The motifs of ancient horrors and sanity work well with the gameplay to feed into that general sense of helpnessness the game thrives on, and intertwine wonderfully with the mechanics and the protagonist's own backstory. I tend to really enjoy media that makes you slowly grow to hate the protagonist as much as possible as the story progresses, though this one does beg the question of how much responsibility lies on the acting individual if they can't remember what they did. Either way, the whole setting and all I've mentioned really do feed well into that idea of not really knowing what's going on or what's going to happen well.

In general with horror, the big blanket that surrounds it that tends to stir up the most fear is quite obviously the unknown. Part of the reason I think this game stirred up so much attention is that it does its best to feed into that as much as possible. The in-game tips, the mechanics that discourage learning, and certain expectations I had prior to beginning all fed into eachother and back into that terrible mansion to give a certain feeling of helplessnes. However, there's a small note to each of these: many of those in-game tips are flat-out lies; the enemies are dumber than you think- you can observe and learn their patterns much easier than you're led to believe; many of those certain expectations are completely false. This was quite a shock to learn- I was played for a fool! But quite a scared and having-fun fool I was. And those miconceptions were somewhat on me, for example:

- Not a single story note is required and many of them have a negative impact on your sanity. However, they're one of the only real ways to get a grasp on the story.
- Exploration is how you obtain optional goodies, like the notes, oil, and tinderboxes, but these tend to be completely unnecessary, and put you at greater risk of sanity loss and enemy spawns.

This is a unique situation, and has the impact of making it so the players that go out of their way and explore the most will get the most well-rounded view of the game and the greatest depth of story, as well as the most frights, but will be generally more insane than the player who and treads the forward path. I'll admit it felt somewhat like a kick in the shin to learn this, but it was effective. Though, it does also somewhat feel like a way to make up for the fact that the player generally is not ever in as much danger as they might think.

That really is the big issue with relying so much on the unknown, though. The moment you learn is pretty much the moment the game loses the vast majority of its fear factor, and contributes to a big issue- The Dark Descent is really not all that replayable. You play it again, but the fear is pretty much gone now, and what you're left with is a large set of tasks and time spent waiting for the enemies to despawn, and then you notice quite how tedious this is. Everything is apparentally optional and doesn't grant you anything material, the resources you scavenged for are abundant in fairly obvious spots but aren't even really all that necessary. You can't really die, you can't really go insane, and you can't really lose- but that's when the game somewhat loses its horror tag, when the fear of what isn't known is replaced by the fear of just... losing. Every enemy becomes obvious in it's movement, and you're sprinting through levels in the dark you previously walked in a crouch with your lantern lit high. The flashbacks that once served as a drip-dry of story are now incredibly, incredibly tedious to move so slowly through. However, considering everying, that first playthrough was pretty good.

One big issue that's drawn from that conclusion, however, is there really isn't a lot to the game. It's quite small! Very, very short. Despite that, even, some gamebreaking bugs can occur where necessary quest items fly out of bounds or etc etc. Not good! However, considering the size of the studio and the troubles I hear plagued development, I give them a pass on that. The lack of danger in the game and size of it means a little missed step due to a big isn't too big a deal, and never caused me much frustration. I'm just thankful the developers knew the game was going to release with bugs like these, and had the wonderful forsight to make it so they could never truly interrupt your gameplay. Very smart decision!

I have to admit, just like the game designers when they were writing the in-game tips, I have lied to you. In fact, they based the entire hard mode around not being able to save as often. Well, that sucks, and the danger is more apparent, and a gamebreaking bug could cost you quite some time! Luckily, since it is a hard mode after all, a good player should be able to save often enough to not have this be a real issue, since all the item locations are predestined. I apologize, but I have lied to you again. On top of that, they absolutely gut the items you need to save. It's not even that hard mode is incredibly difficult, even considering the buffs to the enemies, it just ends up being quite infurating when you move to quickly on a puzzle, and piece gets stuck in a way it really rather wouldn't, and now you have to backtrack about an hour because you couldn't find any of the 2 save items on the map. A little infuriating, at that. With this, we can draw a new history on the transformation of the fear in this game: fear of the unknown becomes a lack of fear entirely on replay, and a lack of fear is once again replaced by a fear of losing some substantially annoying amount of time.

Despite these issues, and considering the age and success of the game, it's influence is palpable. Anyone currently about 17 to 24 probably grew up watching YouTubers play The Dark Descent. Now games like Roblox's "Doors" are what the kids watch and from my knowledge of it, about half of it's mechanics are present in some way here. I'm not a horror afficionado, so I can't say with confidence those mechanics were born here, but the similarities are apparent.

Even despite issues I noted, the game is worth playing. It's a historical landmark with a low price, but if you don't enjoy this specific era of horror games' style, you might be better off playing any of its newer successors. I could, however, never 'not recommend' this game. That first playthrough really was enjoyable.

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