LifeisXbox’s DARQ: Complete Edition review | In DARQ we play as Lloyd, a boy that finds out that he’s is dreaming. Unfortunately for him, his dreams turn out into nightmares. During the game, which is developed by Unfold Games, you will have to solve puzzles in order to escape the monsters and creatures that haunt Lloyd.
We played DARQ: Complete edition for 3 hours on the Nintendo Switch. This game is also available on PC, Xbox & PlayStation
What we liked!
- Puzzles | DARQ: Complete Edition is divided into 7 chapters and then 2 DLCs. In each chapter, you will need to solve a certain amount of puzzles in order to progress and complete it. Every chapter has a unique look with its own special puzzles to solve. Mostly the levels are pretty easy to solve and you will figure out very quickly what you will need to do in order to escape, but sometimes things might get a bit harder and you really need to crack your skull to think everything through. As I already mentioned, every chapter has its own distinctive look, for example, one level takes place in an old theatre where another one takes place on the streets, making every single chapter extra enjoyable because it doesn’t get repetitive and challenges you to discover more.
- Sound | One of the best things about DARQ is definitely the sound effects. There is a sinister soundtrack playing in the background that puts you nicely in the horror mood. This is topped off with very lovely sound effects for almost everything. If you move an object or put a device in motion, everything has its own unique sound and when you’re moving around it’s just wow. I really, really loved this aspect of the game!
- Visuals | I already talked a bit about this, but the design of the game is actually amazing. From the design of the chapters to how they designed the nightmare creatures, it’s simply fantastic. You can really tell what kind of feeling the developers want you to have while playing DARQ and they executed this perfectly. They went into detail with everything.
Somewhere between
- DLCs | DARQ: Complete Edition offers 2 extra chapters to play. These 2 new chapters are a perfect follow-up to the 7 chapters of the base game and, as you probably expected, they fit right in with the theme of the game. Visually and sound-wise, I maybe liked them even more than the original chapters. Unfortunately, something happened with these extra levels that put a dark mark on the whole game. First of all, the levels are a lot harder than the original ones, and okay, it’s a DLC so it’s supposed to be something extra but there is a big difference in difficulty here. And second of all, the levels are broken with bugs. I don’t know if it is a Nintendo Switch thing only, but I had to replay them several times because I got stuck due to errors occurring.
What we disliked
- Bugs | I already mentioned it in the previous point, but there are a couple of bugs that are worth mentioning. In the original 7 chapters, I only encountered one where my screen suddenly got filled with a black mist up to the point where I couldnt see anything. Luckily I know where I went into the next room I was able to see again. At first, I wasn’t just if this was a part of the game, but after some research, it became obvious that it wasn’t. But the bugs that I encountered in the DLC were just game-breaking and made me quit playing for a couple of days because I was tired of starting the levels over and over again. The biggest problem I encounterd in the first DLC was that I got stuck and could walk in the air on invisible walls, this happend a couple times and to fix this I had to restart the chapter. But the worst thing happend in both the DLCs: at random moments I dropped down from the map and just got a black screen. This happend several times and got me really frustrated, as you can imagine…
CONCLUSION
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