Through the Woods

Darkwood is a game that took me three attempts to finish.  The first two were aborted due to frustration, but finally the third time was the charm...as the saying goes.  It took me 31 in-game days and about a half-dozen deaths, but I managed to get to the ending...the true ending.  Before proceeding further, I should mention there's going to be major spoilers ahead.  If you happen to be someone who is interested in playing the game, but hasn't yet, then consider yourself duly warned.  Now, let us enter the dark.

I want to say my successful completion of Darkwood was due to me mastering the systems, but (in all honesty) I'm pretty sure the developers reduced the difficulty in post-release patches.  In particular, enemies seem to have less health in the current version of the game...that, or the weapons do more damage.  Either way, the hostile creatures that inhabit the woods go down a lot more quickly than they used to.  

With the benefit of hindsight, I now realize that my first attempt to finish the game got fairly close.  I was definitely well past the halfway mark.  Despite being a hard game, the penalty for dying is not especially harsh; lose half your gear and spawn back at you home base for the region you're in.  If you go on a corpse run you can recover any lost items at the exact spot you died.  Only the higher difficulty settings place a limit on the number of times you can repeat this process.  Despite these mercies combat can still get pretty frustrating.  The character you play (known only as "The Stranger") isn't the most spry fellow.  He tires quickly, seems to suffer from tunnel vision, has a very low tolerance for punishment, and can only dodge directly backward a short distance (with no I-frames).  He can be leveled-up, but (in an interesting design decision) has to take some negative traits in order to gain positive ones.  In fact the cost/benefit ratio is so decidedly mixed, it's a common strategy among veteran players to forgo the system entirely.

One feature I greatly appreciate about Darkwood is there being more than one way to complete story objectives or acquire key items.  The NPCs I encountered throughout the game were a hideous, but memorable bunch.  Regrettably, every single one of them ended up dead in my game by the time the credits rolled.  The one exception being the Wolfman whose ultimate whereabouts were simply listed as "unknown."  Despite liking the characters, I had a hard time following the story.  It's told rather cryptically, and only really comes together at the very end.  As far as I can gather some malignant entity (simply referred to as "The Being") came to a rural part of Poland in (or around) 1975.  Fast forward to the early 1980s and the region has become a neigh impenetrable forest filled with mutations and madmen.  Since it's Soviet era Poland I guess the government isn't in any rush to get to the bottom of things though agents (called "Outsiders" in-game) do attempt to investigate what is going on.  Overall, the setting is a mix of Slavic folklore and Strugatsky's highly influential novella "Roadside Picnic."  Personally, I picked up on tones of H.P. Lovecraft's "The Colour of Outer Space" and Jeff Vander Meer's "Annihilation" as well.

Generally speaking, the music and visuals do an excellent job of setting a creepy mood without much in the way of jump scares (though there are a few...I particularly liked the fake out one in the epilogue with a unexpectedly friendly dog).  Gameplay-wise, Darkwood is unfortunately a bit lacking.  Certain aspects (such as ineffective barricades and banshee swarm stunlocking) are very frustrating and detract from what would be an otherwise masterful experience.  Still, I recommend checking it out if you're into survival horror - it is one of the better entries in that genre, especially when it comes to atmosphere.