Dark and Deep [Review]
Here Below’s debut horror game, Dark and Deep, is intriguing but deeply flawed.
Dark and Deep. Credit: Here Below
Dark and Deep, developed by Walter Woods, is a first-person horror game and the first title published by his studio, Here Below, founded in 2020. It’s an intriguing cosmic horror story with a visual aesthetic that draws on artist Gustave Doré’s 19th-century prints. While the game is promising, it’s severely lacking in polish. The gameplay is frustrating and makes completing Dark and Deep a chore despite its short length.
You are Samuel Judge, an IT worker obsessed with a conspiracy podcast called “Dark and Deep.” After the game’s opening, where your van—carrying a corpse wrapped in black plastic and duct tape—dramatically crashes off a cliff, you move back and forth between reality at your corporate job and a surreal, hellish cavern system, both of which also bleed into each other. Along the way, you get most story information from chats on your PC and episodes of the eponymous podcast.
Dark and Deep. Credit: Here Below
The gameplay combines puzzle platforming with camera mechanics inspired by Fatal Frame. You hold up and look through a series of magical frames to reveal objects or fight creatures. Both aspects of the game felt unpolished.
For the platforming and puzzling, you can walk, jump, operate switches, pick up objects, and grab specific ledges to climb. Movement and jumping were very clunky, leading to frustration when jumping between platforms. For unknown reasons, you move more slowly when you’re not looking straight ahead, which feels like a poor design decision if it’s not a bug.
Some puzzles require you to grab embers of light from glowing water, which you then use to power ancient machines. Picking up the embers from still water works well enough, but it becomes an exercise in frustration when you need to snag them from flowing waterfalls. I would see an ember slowly coming down a waterfall, and even when it was in my direct line of sight and close to me, I would only successfully pick it up less than half the time. Sometimes, ember collision with machines felt imprecise. This kind of imprecise jank ruins games for me.
Dark and Deep. Credit: Here Below
The frame mechanics were frustrating as well. The first frame, which reveals hidden objects, requires you to look at a spot for just a bit too long to make something appear. This isn’t as bad as the combat frame, used to see and fight invisible enemies. The frame reveals the enemies immediately but will only damage them if the exact center dot of the frame is aimed at them. It seems counterintuitive since I’m gazing through a frame, not firing a laser beam. There are parts of the game when you need to defend machines powered by embers that keep platforms afloat from the creatures while crossing said platforms; it’s a little hard to say how many times I fell to my death because of the platforming mechanics or because I failed to aim at the monsters properly. Later on, another mirror is used to see and destroy snakes; if the mirror's center isn’t exactly on the snake’s head for several seconds, it fails to destroy them.
Dark and Deep. Credit: Here Below
I was intrigued by the developer’s explicit reference to Gustave Doré as the game's aesthetic influence. However, I was left disappointed. While the art is visually striking, I didn’t see a connection to Doré’s work except for the game’s use of print-like hatched ink textures. I was hoping for more. The underground environments that use the style feel lifeless; they lack the richness of Doré’s illustrations.
Woods’ mission statement for Here Below is to “become the A24 of game companies.” Playing Dark and Deep wasn’t a fun or fulfilling experience, and it shows that the studio has a long way to go to reach that lofty goal. A24’s films aren’t just auteur-centered and often visually striking “elevated” genre movies; they’re also almost always of high quality and production value, even on lower budgets. Though Dark and Deep is a valiant effort, the level of polish necessary just isn’t there.
Dark and Deep is available now on Steam for PC.
Overall Score: 4/10
Played on: Steam Deck
