Messages

I reported this thing. Hopefully they take it down soon.

It's definitely worth it Allen! There's much more than creepyness and horrorness in there!

[Darkwood]

Darkwood


Hello. I've recently found this pearl called Darkwood (link to a steam page). Game was developed by Acid Wizards Studio as their first game ever. After few hours spent on it, I honestly can say it IS a true indie masterpiece.

The game environment is set in Poland, most likely somewhat before the year 1990. The titular woods are also infested with some sort of plague of unknown origin, spewing mutated plants here and there and affecting living things. It is told that woods grow incredibly fast and at point where our adventure begins, exit routes are already overgrown to the point of being unaccessible, as woods are growing incredibly fast and are adamant doing so.
At the beginning we don't know much about what is really going on, but as the story progresses we uncover weird, twisted or outright crazy things - Like a man with a wolf's head carrying assault rifle on his back.

The environment contains good dose of carefully hidden really dark humour here and there, as well as dramatic plots of the story. Characters inhabiting this world are unique, and really strongly emphasized aside from limited interaction with them.

To the details then! It's survival horror - and it really can scare the hell out of you. Not by just throwing some ugly and loud as hell creature at you in the darkness. It most likely won't give you outright heart attack. Instead it builds the atmosphere that makes you want to hide in the darkest corner and pretend you are not there. All this is built with excellent, very suggestive sound environment - birds, footsteps, subtle cracks of twigs or just fear inducing roars. In few words: sound in Darkwood is fantastic!

Everything is presented in top-down view with protagonist in the center. Brings memories of old GTA perspective but here similarities end. World surrounding us is really pretty (as far as it goes for plague ridden mutated forest) and alive. You can see tree branches and grass waving on the wind, level of tiny details is incredible. Blood spatters when someone gets hit or splinters of wood when, lets say, a door receives a hit. It's all very suggestive, and gives the feel of how powerful hits are. Animations are top notch too - the characters move and believably in various situations. On top of that we have really nice set of shaders making overall mood just right.

Fighting mechanic is simple but it is not dumb by any means. It's slow and difficult, it needs careful weighting of the odds - I'm not going to bulls**t you. Even one enemy is a serious threat. There are firearms, and are really powerful, but ammunition doesn't grow on trees (however mutated these trees may be) so you need to count every shot. Melee fighting needs patience and good timing - also running away pretty often as the stamina of main characters drops rapidly, especially when swinging heavier weapon.

So, finally we're at other mechanics as I already covered other aspects avoiding as much spoilers as I can. Let's start with creating items. You can craft plethora of things using items found in the world. Bandages to heal yourself, traps, weapons, improvements of your equipment and various utility items - like a lockpick, lamp or torch. But before it's possible to create more complex items, it's necessary to improve our workbench. Few items can be crafted without the bench, but these are rather simple, more like in emergency.

Before the night falls, and darkness embrace the world, you also need to fortify your hideout - mainly by barricading doors and windows, laying traps, and cleverly placing furniture. Yes... And no, it's not The Sims.
As the night falls... You really need to refuel that generator in the shed while it's still light enough. Light helps you see at night and helps to keep away whatever is outside. At night, the forest wakes up as well its inhabitants. And they want to get you, so you must be prepared. Boarded up windows, closet conveniently placed against the door, lights on. Now the real survival begins. Nothing will save you but first glimpse of new dawn. As time pass, you can hear them outside doing... something. Moving around, making noise, even some mumbling unintelligibly to the point, when you really do not want to know what it really is. Eventually they may know you are inside, and then will try to get in. Bashing the window or ramming the door. At point when you see unhuman hellbent force, violently trying to push the door wide open - you will hold onto that closet, pushing it against the door until morning come. Or your last breath. Ofcourse you can try your chances in open fight. But do you really want to know against what you will stand?


And that would be the end of that review-ish thing. I hope you enjoyed it!

I never was a fan of killboxes as they ruin my immersion in the game. Never had to really use any. Instead I'm defending my colony with roofed sandbag-wall-sandbag lines. Just like here on screen below (though that raid caught me with pants down immediately after dealing with the poison ship). I kept baiting them around, firing here and there. After a while I let them bash some door and enter straight into gunfire.

Recently I started using double set of outside doors - wooden and stone. Wooden outside and stone inside. Stone doors are kept open in the peaceful times, wooden are always closed as the colonists open them fairly quickly. Managing it may be a pain, but I think it's worth it. As for the stone walls - I'm building outer walls of stone as soon as possible, preferably granite. Same goes for doors - granite all the way.

Also you can get rid of the cats.

I can't see the problem with the proper gun description. Just learn what is what and problem solves itself. I found this mod great so far and I was pleased to see original guns names. After a while I showed mod to my girlfriend, and even she knowing only which end of a gun is dangerous didn't had issues with that. With proper gun names you can also google that and actually learn stuff about real guns that way. I'd call it win-win situation.

Rimworld is worth every penny of its price. Taking into consideration replayability and thus number of hours possibly spent having fun playing the game for a given price – I'd say the ratio is pretty high, way higher than most other games I know. Tons of mods increase that ratio even more.

4965

I'll try the mod right now, looks great! I like the references to Counter Strike and Half-Life (dual berettas, crowbar and the knife) =D

It looks so great, I'd eat it. I wonder if we would need to build the boats to go across the seas.

This is very exciting story! You are doing fantastic work writing it. I was anticipating the next part, when you posted it right in time and made my day in the last minutes of it Keep going, I'll wait for the next part.

Recently, after I started colony, volcanic winter begun one day before regular winter was about to end. It last two seasons and two days so far. Randy hates me.

From my experience in KSP (since 0.14) optimization had some fluctuation until 0.18 and since then, it works pretty much all the same with very minor improvement after switching to Unity 5. So I can't really tell anything about "optimization passes" if there really was any.
Don't know about Rust too much as I don't read dev blogs of it, but I can tell, I didn't noticed any significant improvement after any of patches that was released. It works with more-less steady since... hell, it was 2014 I think? Since then only number of crashes to desktop per hour increasing.

This may not be the most badass thing I saw, but definitely it is most recent badassery around this colony.

Raid alert pops up right after the colony was done dealing with some angry tribesmen. Colonists capable of combat are exhausted and wounded, but there is no time to recuperate - bad guys are right on the doorstep. Gunfight starts, two colonists drop dead almost immediately under the rain of the bullets, third one killed two bad guys and forced them to flee. Unfortunately, wolf lurking around finished off the last defender who can shoot at all, then merrily started to eat his flesh.

Raid alert pops up. Third one in a row. It seems like Randy didn't liked my idea of stockpiling human corpses in the obscure fridge:


Here the heroism starts, as there is only two colonists left alive.

Four bandits rushing front door, two of them with molotovs, one with sniper rifle and one with pistol. Colonists waiting inside, only wooden wall and doors separating Zippy, who is colony's main medic, animal trainer and farmer, and Bus - nurse who helps him patch up sick and wounded. She's also colony's tailor.
Bus is incapable of violence and Zippy can't shoot at all, and barely knows how to properly hold a knife in the knife fight.

Bandits throwing molotovs at walls setting fires, and they trying to break the doors. Zippy and Bus repairing walls with whatever they have lying around, extinguishing fires from inside, hoping that bandits just go away or that wolf comes back to eat some different flesh and wreak havoc among the raiders.
None of this happens. Instead, glimpse of luck strikes the colony as the guys throwing molotovs seems to be complete idiots. They set each other on fire just as the serious guy with the rifle breaks down the door.
Man in fiery agony rushes through broken door and finds himself under the Zippy's knife. They fight a short while and the man on fire drops on the ground. Meanwhile outside, Zippy's husky acts as distraction but eventually burns to death.



Bandit carrying a sniper rifle enters quickly through wrecked door, shooting at brave Zippy. Shield is holding, Zippy runs away and hides just few meters away, behind the rocks, only to wait for the bandit to get closer. He strikes when the bad guy is close enough and gets knocked down by his weapon's stock. Though, he managed to make a new hole in the raider.

Bus, the nurse, was peeking around the corner whole time. Terrified, unable to do anything. But as the Zippy falls on the ground something snaps inside her. She rushes toward Zippy, ramming wounded bandit in the way. She grabs poor Zippy and runs away into the depths of the colony complex, to the hospital. Bullets fly around as she runs through the straight path. One bullet hits, but it seems adrenaline rush covers the pain.



In the hospital section, Bus patches up Zippy. They have enough time before bandits find they way to the hospital as the colony don't have any signs around pointing what is where. Bandits have to knock down every door they find, one by one, before they find the hospital. Fortunately it is located in the opposite side of the whole colony.

While Zippy is resting, Bus sneaks around the colony messing with the raiders. She have clear objective in this reckless behavior. Every minute they trying to catch her is one more minute Zippy have to get back on his feet. This plan works. Zippy eventually gets out of the hospital on his own feet. Badly wounded and in severe pain, he knows that he is the only one who can defend their home right now. Or die trying.

Soldiers from the gang known as "The Cutters" managed to destroy generators powering lights on the corridors and less important devices. They were relentless in destroying everything in their path, trying to find man who deadly stabbed one of them and severely wounded another.
In the darkness Zippy went to the armory and found it plundered, but some weapons were still there. He grabbed heavy club with sharp metal spikes sticking out of it. Anger and vengeance were boiling inside him as he walked through the corridors drowned in darkness.
GodD won't seEe whatT is about to hapPen. ClOudss of volcAaniCc asShess in the Ssky are too thickK evVen for hiMm to seeEee... - He whispered.

Zippy easily found two bandits, as they were yelling worst curses and most indecent words addressed to Bus, while destroying everything they stumbled into. Raider carrying the rifle was sure he killed Zippy on the spot with the blow he delivered. He clearly lost his mind too, most probably because of pain and blood loss.

The nurse did good job and lured bandits to the tight intersection of corridors barely lit by light pouring out of the door frame. The delicate glow of the Zippy's shield around him caused bandits thinking they seeing a ghost in the darkness. They held even stronger to this ridiculous concept as the bullets did not affected the silhouette at all.

Man with the rifle was already weakened and couldn't hold his rifle straight. He tripped over something trying to move into barely lit room. Fatal blow was already descending from above and squashed his head like stick squashes the pumpkin.

Female bandit stood there, compulsively pulling the trigger of her hand gun again and again, even after she used all the bullets. She rushed blindly into the darkness of corridor. Zippy knew exactly how to prevent her escape, and he took much shorter path to catch her. And he did.

Woman was trying to kick down door to the unused, empty room at the end of the main corridor. As she noticed terrifying figure walking towards her in the gloom, she emptied whole magazine of bullets in desperate attempt to save life.
Please! Please God! Have mercy! - Woman cried. Cried her last words.
THere are nO GoDd... herEe. I amM. - Figure replied with grievously distorted voice.