Dark and Deep Review

thesixthaxis.com:

As someone of a certain age, I’ve never really got into podcasts – a reaction not helped by the fact that everybody and their dog seem to have one nowadays. In fact I think I’ve actually been on more podcasts than I’ve actually listened to… That said, I can see the appeal of long form audio treatments of interesting topics, and especially the kind of spooky or dark content that works so well in that format. Dark and Deep takes the genre of conspiracy and haunted podcasts and weaves it into a disturbing and twisted tale with a truly unique artstyle.

The central premise of Dark and Deep concerns the question of who is Samuel Judge, an IT specialist and loner who may be wrapped up in mysterious conspiracies. You play as the aforementioned Samuel and must unravel the increasingly weird situations you are thrust into whilst only relying on the hints revealed through enigmatic webchat conversations and snippets of the Dark and Deep podcast. What transpires feels like a fever dream that takes you from an argument over a stolen sandwich to deadly encounters with ghostly snakes and more.

Booting up Dark and Deep immediately strikes you with the singular vision of its distinctive artstyle. Solo dev Walter Woods has spent years immersed in the beautifully Gothic aesthetics of nineteenth century artist, Gustav Doré, and the result is as effective as it is unique. The environments you explore are made up of the monochromatic hash effects that characterise Dore’s style interspersed with more photo realistic modern offices and server rooms. This combination creates a techno-Gothic dreamy Hellscape that is perhaps Dark and Deep’s greatest feature.

Playing from a first-person perspective, exploration is mostly linear, aside from some puzzles that require a certain amount of backtracking. This approach works well to push you forward and the final build is much more focused and streamlined than the demo one I played a few months back. Aside from navigating the environments you will be