I happen to be having problems sleeping these previous weeks, often tossing and turning during the night and getting out of bed anxious. So when presented with a game exploring lucid dreams, blurring the line between fantasy and reality, morbid curiosity made it impossible not to play. DARQ: Complete Edition is an atmospheric psychological horror puzzle-platformer following the plight of Lloyd, a boy held in a dilapidated house and the own looping nightmares. The debut title from developer Unfold Games, and authored by Feardemic, DARQ: Complete Edition includes the bottom game's original seven chapters as well as two additional DLC levels–The Tower and newly-added The Crypt.
DARQ doesn't waste much time plunging you in to the story; this game is all about atmosphere. You wake up inside a crumbling, dilapidated house as Lloyd–a pale, skinny boy inside a striped shirt and pointed black boots. I was immediately struck by DARQ's score, which completely elevates the game's tortured dreamscapes and blankets all of them with creeping trepidation. Your surroundings are swathed in shadowy hues of purple and gray, all blanketed in a dreamlike white mist that appears to mimic that hazy feeling of attempting to recollect a memory.
There's nowhere just to walk but forward. After passing through a sparse kitchen and a shadowy hallway, you come upon a mattress and therefore are offered the choice to visit sleep. However, there's no rest available in sleep. Lloyd's nightmares aren't very different than the drab world he left behind, except now the rules of reality are lifted. Layers of illusion and creative interpretations every day objects lay groundwork for a large number of gravity-defying puzzles (with a few light stealth elements included) as Lloyd sneaks and scurries in all directions to avoid dread-inducing monsters and escape his lucid dreams.
Come across a wall, and you can suddenly walk up it. Pull a lever and the game's camera shifts perspective, entirely altering the layout of the map and revealing a brand new path forward. Press a control button watching as what appeared to be the fluorescent-lit factory basement you had been exploring transforms into living, dripping flesh, removing an obstacle inside your way.
Meanwhile, the objects you discover seem innocuous at first. I had been puzzled when i acquired an abandoned wristwatch and added it to my inventory, wondering how this tiny object would help me escape the sinister factory I was trapped inside. But DARQ is a game that rewards trial and error and leaning into dream logic. Later within the level, when I came across a sizable chasm and may find not one other answer, I decided the watch from my inventory on a whim and watched because it grew bigger than life, stretching itself and forming a bridge for Lloyd to cross.
The genius of DARQ is in how deceptively simple it may be. The game encourages you to look at something once, then again from another angle. It is a side-scroller that's not nearly moving from one end to a different. It's sometimes frustrating to locate yourself walking exactly the same paths again and again, before you notice a detail that the eye had passed over before and the solution suddenly becomes obvious and unmissable.
The have to scrutinize every scene and carefully examine your surroundings also helps make the game's jump scares particularly jarring. For a game that does this kind of excellent job of building tension simply with its setting and masterful sound design alone, I'd wished for more sophisticated horror over momentary scares.
Some may also find the lack of a “story” disappointing. But I found the field of DARQ rich enough for interpretation that I didn't require more beyond what the game showed me to speculate and make my very own theories on Lloyd's background. Overall, these gripes are small when looking at the expertise of playing DARQ as an entire.
A great game for any weekend or maybe even an afternoon, DARQ: Complete Edition packs in about 4-6 hours of spooky puzzles. Best enjoyed with headphones, its strengths are its immersive and chilling sound design supplied by Cyberpunk 2077 and Hitman's Bjorn Jacobsen, and its creative, perspective-shifting platforming inside a vividly realized world. Although it leans more unsettling than scary and also at times relies too heavily on cheap scares, it is a satisfying, imaginative game that is well-deserving of an afternoon. I would not recommend it to cure any lack of, though.
DARQ: Complete Edition is available now on PC (Steam, GOG), Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Playstation 4/5, and Nintendo Switch.
