Developer Acid Wizard Studios’ wonderfully nightmarish top-down survival horror Darkwood is unfurling its grasping tendrils on Xbox One, PS4, and PC later this month.
For those unfamiliar, Darkwood, which originally released on PC in 2017, is a deeply idiosyncratic, but frightening effective horror experience, combining exploration, combat, scavenging, crafting, and survival into an extremely unusual whole.
Following a breathtaking opening sequence that immediately succeeds in pulling the rug out from under you, Darkwood deploys every tool in its arsenal to confound, confuse, and unnerve. There’s a full map of the forest, for instance, but rarely does it give you any sense of where you are, and the vast majority of your activities are viewed through a limited cone of vision.