If you’ve been knocking about VG247 for a while now, you’ll know that I am a horror nut. It’s my whole jam, most of my personal brand, and most importantly, my passion. I don’t know what draws me to horror necessarily, but there’s something about exploring the deepest, darkest recesses of people's minds - be it creators or characters - that is deeply fascinating to me. The aptly named Dark and Deep, one of the many participants in this month's Steam Next Fest, definitely scratches that itch.
Inviting you into a haunting world made up of Gustave Dore’s artwork, Dark and Deep is an illusory, psychological tale of a man known as Samuel Judge; he is a man deeply fascinated by a conspiracy theory podcast, which you’ll bear witness to, but there’s something much darker lurking beneath the surface. He’s clearly isolated and stuck, unhappy with where his life has wound up. During the demo that I played, which featured much of the first part of the game and the beginning of the second part (there are three parts in total, made up of multiple brief sections), you play as Samuel as he experiences a nightmarish dilemma: he is trapped in an ever-changing world, made up of the devils and demons we see in Dore’s artwork. They’re hungry, and will stop at nothing to access the light that Samuel uses to make his way through this hellish landscape. It’s a brilliant blend between the two mediums, elevating Gustave Dore’s artwork and using it to tell yet another story, centuries after Dore’s passing.
Samuel must navigate these claustrophobic corridors - which you should really look at, by the way - using frames that reveal different parts of the world to him, with other frames helping him dispel monsters known as Crawlers. These frames carry secret messages, too, from an unknown character we’re yet to see more of; but we know one thing, and that’s that they’re taunting him. And while this world Samuel initially explores is deeply alien, there’s moments of familiarity too.
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