Darkout is a sandbox survival game, one of those where you shape your own world, gather resources, and craft better gear in an attempt to survive. The game has been compared to Minecraft and Terraria, the leading games in the genre. Allgraf, the UK Indie developer, made sure Darkout has its own unique features. It is all surviving in a world full of enemies, and believe me staying alive is not so easy at the beginning.
In a game a player controls an astronaut who crashed on a mysterious world of Illuna. The world is covered in darkness, with some maps being pitch black, and the light is the very essence of surviving. Nasty looking, shadowy creatures have infested the planet and made the civilization that inhabited the world to abandon Illuna in a hope to start their life elsewhere. While thousands of other inhabitants are still in orbit, you are not that lucky. Your escape pod has been ejected in order to save their lives and you are back in the hostile environment that you once called a home.
After creating a character, naming your world and specifying its size, you are placed on a randomly generated map with fire burning on your left, and an escape pod that needs to be chopped down for resources. You will need a lot of resources to research and craft better items, in order to build shelters which will protect you from pesky enemies. The nasty beings will spit an acid giving an instant kill, and they to like to sneak upon you too.
Since there is no good tutorial in a game, a good tip will be handy. Try to have light torches placed in the area you work ok. The light keeps darkness away, and if there’s no light enemies are impossible to kill. Remember to pick torches back before you move forward. Dig as much as you can to gather resources as building a first shelter is the priority. Without a shelter you have very little chance to survive. As you progress and research better items your shelter will become stronger and modernized. It is a long way to go in a game, but if you have patience gaming experience will be better and better.
Another important thing to note is that you will respawn at specific place, not where you were when your life came to an end. You also won’t have a full health after a rebirth, and medicine that fills it up is scarce at first. Unlike you, enemies will regenerate their health pretty fast, even when you’re trying to defeat them they will jump back a few steps and you can see their health regenerating immediately. So to avoid long, boring runs back where you were when you died, place a recoil beacon at a spot where you want to get too. The beacon serves as a respawn point and you will have one in the inventory as soon as game starts.
Key binds cannot be changed, a minor downfall, though it’s ok as you will soon get used to the default ones. Left and right mouse buttons will be used mostly anyway because you will dig and fight most of the time. Key binds are actually explained under ‘Manuals’ menu, but that page is not visible when you open the menu. To see the keys just click on ‘Next’ few times and you will get it. That reminds me, the last two pages of ‘Manual’ show an upcoming updates. Good to see devs are working on a research and crafting as it’s not very clear at the moment. It is really helpful to keep inventory or crafting screen open as that will prevent the screen scrolling while you’re trying to point your cursor over different areas on a map, or even to open the menu.
As a good sandbox game, Darkout has cool graphics. The biomes are very detailed, for example while you dig your way through a tunnel there will be a rock wall in a place where the dirt used to be. You can feel the atmosphere changing as you transform your world. Characters and enemies look like those from an old platform game, not that I think it’s a bad thing. I like to see cartoon-like graphics in a game, makes it more fun. Sound effects on the other hand could be improved, although I did enjoy an atmospheric soundtrack, there’s that not so enjoyable sound every time you shovel the dirt out.
This was my first sandbox survival experience so took me a while before I figured out what to do. Better tutorial would have been appreciated, but after an hour or two I got a hang of it and that’s when the fun begun. Darkout got me playing until early morning hours, something I haven’t done for a long time. I really enjoyed building my own world. If you like Minecraft and Terraria, then Darkout is a game for you. It is not perfect, but there updates in progress which will improve gaming experience.
How it Scores:
Good side
- Easy controls once you get used to them,
- Biomes are very detailed,
- Soundtracks add to an atmospheric feeling,
- NPC voice is truly sci-fi.
Downsides
- Basic tutorial,
- Screen scrolling with cursor movement,
- Rather annoying sound effect when digging. (This is being fixed)
Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.
You must be logged in to post a comment.