Welcome To The Dark Place

we love you zeekerss

Welcome to the Dark Place is an original and really interesting game where you're out on your own, navigating and mapping the world while figuring things out by yourself. Do NOT play it if you're not willing to do these things on your own, the game will give you small hints but it's up to you to interpret them and find the solutions to the puzzles. There's almost no visual except some short pixaleted cinematics from time to time. Everything else is text and sound, which leaves it up to your imagination. I really enjoyed that part, especially as the sound design of the game is amazing. I also really enjoyed exploring this game's world, which feels like a walk through a nightmare or a fever dream. Things in Welcome to the Dark Place don't make sense, or just enough for you to figure the way out at least. This game was a great unexpected experience and I highly recommend it to people willing to put the time and work in figuring things out by themselves. Please note that this game is very time consuming as mapping the world is necessary to complete it. Honestly, I started it thinking it'd be a few hours of gameplay but as you can see I put way more time into it than expected. Personnally, with this play time, I was able to figure out almost everything by myself expect a small detail of a puzzle that I had to look up because I had found it but didn't make the link, which is unfortunate. So it's definitely possible to do it on your own without guide if you're willing to. If I had to list some small defaults, I would say that I would have wished your choices could have lead to more diverse outcomes even though it didn't particularily bother me while playing. There's also two little details in the puzzles that are, in my opinion, a bit too far-fetched and hard to figure out. One of them being the small thing I had to look up. Looking back, it makes sense, but at the time it's the kind of things you don't think about or that are easy to miss. Honestly, this game would deserve a guide with hints only that could help people who are stuck. All the guides I found simply spoiled the solutions unfortunately so I didn't want to use them, even when I was stuck at the very end with the last small detail I was missing. But I ended up giving up after a dozen of hours without finding anything.

While this is a Not Recommended review, it's a really soft no. Going to be up front immediately: I beat the game while following a guide. I don't have the time or patience to do this on my own. There may be a very small subsect of people who would enjoy doing this 100% unguided, but I am not one of those people. From what I've seen of playing this game, you basically need an entire notebook by your side to plot what every interaction does (to avoid dying or softlocking yourself) and so you can map out where you're going, and I do not want to play any game like that. Also, this is a text based adventure. While there were many bits of story and dialogue that were captivating, the lack of visuals made it hard to keep track of where you are and where to go next. Really once again back to preference with me. Final thing, I've seen negative reviews that were along the lines of "Lethal company paused development for this??" and so forth, and my reaction to that is that burnout is real. Working on a different project can really reignite your passion for the main thing you're working on. My issue with it is that this game feels unpolished and buggy. While I can't give any examples without spoiling much, there are multiple instances of the game having unnecessary prompts that you basically already answered and certain areas that just do not work the way they're intended to. Anyways, you should really only get this game if you enjoy text based adventures and have either the capacity or passion for excessive note taking and map making. Other than that one wall, this game is an amazing experience, whether you follow a guide or not.

[quote] The train escapes the city, out to a deep, dark forest. It's an abandoned apple orchard, now a part of the wild. [b]I could explore it my whole life.[/b] [/quote]

lethal company was on hiatus for this ♥♥♥♥ 😭

Honestly wasn't worth the wait

Incredibly refreshing step into the text adventure space. We need more text adventures that are highly produced like this! The amount of audio in this game is mind-blowing and really helps to immerse you. It has flaws: map feature frustrations (but I love this feature!) and event design (outcomes and inability to use logic). If you like text adventures, this is a must try. If you are curious, well its free.

Lethal Company died for this?

[h1]Wow what a great game[/h1] Zeekerss, I don't know why this game is free. What an awesome experience. Felt like Outer Wilds / Slay the Princess / The Upturned vibes all mixed together into some liminal world. I absolutely loved this game. I did need to use another person's map near the end for some bits as my map-making skills were questionable at best and I do wish there was some 'map' item you could find to help. Apart from that, I feel like I just robbed the dev blind by playing this for free. I can't imagine the detail that went into making this. I loved every minute. If you or anyone else makes another text adventure like this, I'd throw all my money at it. A tip for anyone new playing this: WRITE EVERYTHING CRYPTIC/CODELIKE DOWN. MAKE A GRID MAP (Even if its not in the game itself).