Doing so not only offers Lloyd pathways into other areas, but the shift in gravity allow physics to be a core mechanic in the gameplay. Most however are rather complex, requiring Lloyd to manipulate his nightmare world – rotating rooms so that the walls become floors and the floors become ceilings.

Some of these puzzles are relatively straightforward – aligning blocks in certain patterns or stepping on switches in a particular sequence. It’s up to the gamer to begin exploring Lloyd’s world, interacting with the contextual buttons that pop up, and completing the puzzles the game put forth. While I previously described a storyline regarding the protagonist Lloyd and his awful nightmare world, all of that comes entirely from the DARQ press release, as the game simply drops the gamer into the action with absolutely no explanations, no tutorials, no hints. There’s no shortage of gore, and jump scares galore, but it’s still tongue-in-cheek enough to be acceptable most gamers. The overall aesthetic is an eerie combination of Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride and Konami’s Silent Hill, where faceless toothpick-limbed freaks jump from the shadows and wheelchaired tuba-headed torsos stand guard. In fact, when my son passed by he asked “Oh sick, they made a LIMBO 2?” But dismissing DARQ as a LIMBO knockoff would be a disservice to a well-crafted and enjoyable puzzler, which is as much an homage to, as it is a derivative of, PlayDead’s cult classic.ĭARQ is a 2D side-scrolling adventure that takes place in the dark grayscale world of Lloyd’s nightmare. DARQ takes gamers into the increasingly-disturbing lucid dreams of a young boy named Lloyd, whose only desire is to wake up but instead plunges deeper and deeper into the reality-bending nightmare world.ĭARQ immediately conjures memories of the similarly-themed 2010 classic puzzler LIMBO (released 2015 on PS4) from Danish developer PlayDead ApS. New onto the PlayStation Store, is DARQ: Complete Edition – a horror-puzzler from the relatively unknow Los Angeles-based developer Unfold Games.

Darq the crypt download