Another excellent article! Part of me wants to avoid the next two articles until I play the game, but I know I don't have the time to get around to playing it. So, I'll just live vicariously through your analysis.
Thank you, I'm glad you liked it! As a heads-up, the most major spoilers are in the third part, which is about the game's ending. Part 2 is slightly spoiler-ific but it's mainly to do with specific subplots and themes.
Terrific analysis of an incredible game. What I most love about Darkwood is how the player's knowledge of the setting unfolds in concert with the protagonist's over the course of moment-to-moment gameplay, and I'm not sure I can name another horror game that expresses itself so well through its core mechanics. No streamer bait, no misplaced action setpieces, no (intentional) jump-scares — just a nightmarishly miserable Polish forest that nobody has topped yet.
Awesome start, can't wait for parts two and three!
Thank you! Yeah, that's very much what I love about it, it's very clever how carefully and gradually the exposition is delivered, nothing is spelled out and I really enjoy that. Half the fun with Darkwood is making sense of it all afterwards.
It's such a shame the studio fell apart, it's wild to drop the best horror game on the market with crazy production values and then just... vanish.
I so appreciate this kind of writing. For one thing, quality critical analysis of video games is hard to come by, but more importantly to me, I lack the spleen to play games like this so I have to make do with second-hand frisson. Looking forward to the continuation.
One pedantic item, actually something like an invitation: I'm quite tired of the phrase Lovecraftian being attached to *all* things Gothic. I invite whoever cares to just say Gothic; it's far more rich and descriptive. Lovecraft, as an author, does not deserve even a tenth of the credit given him. The overwhelming majority of his tales are of underwhelming quality.
I didn't care one way or the other myself, until I heard Nick Groom (aka Prof Goth) give his lecture "Nazgûl Taller than Night" (on YT, do check it out, I'm quite confident it's up your alley.) Now it's one of the hills I will to die on. Gothic is, and has been, way more than HP, and he is frankly a poor exponent.
Thanks for reading, glad you enjoyed! You never know whether these kinds of pieces will get any traction until you've posted them.
I would definitely agree that Lovecraftian is an overused descriptor, of course there are objectively Lovecraftian works in popular culture (Bloodborne), but it can be used too freely and too often by people who haven't read Lovecraft and don't really get what does or doesn't make something Lovecraftian.
The reason I use the term here is because Darkwood centres on the horror of the unknown, and on a kind of strange unknowable creature at the heart of the woods (we'll get further into that in Part 3). Lovecraft had a folk horror-ish fear of people from the remote isolated countryside (because he was so... profoundly xenophobic), and Darkwood kind of flirts with that, though in a different way and for different reasons.
He was also very big on dreams, which is another area of overlap. Overall, though, I don't go too far into the Lovecraft connection, Part 2 will get into more relevant works.
Fair enough, and "profoundly xenophobic" as a gloss on "deeply racist" is funny enough to me to restrain any further quibbles.
I would just love it if the industry as a whole would abandon the equation Gothic+Tentacles=Lovecraft, Lovecraft+Video Game=Profit! It really stuck in my craw with Skald (an excellent and properly Gothic game,) being called Lovecraftian when there's an entire episode lifted straight from Chambers. And don't even get me started on Dredge.
Another excellent article! Part of me wants to avoid the next two articles until I play the game, but I know I don't have the time to get around to playing it. So, I'll just live vicariously through your analysis.
Thank you, I'm glad you liked it! As a heads-up, the most major spoilers are in the third part, which is about the game's ending. Part 2 is slightly spoiler-ific but it's mainly to do with specific subplots and themes.
I can't wait!
Terrific analysis of an incredible game. What I most love about Darkwood is how the player's knowledge of the setting unfolds in concert with the protagonist's over the course of moment-to-moment gameplay, and I'm not sure I can name another horror game that expresses itself so well through its core mechanics. No streamer bait, no misplaced action setpieces, no (intentional) jump-scares — just a nightmarishly miserable Polish forest that nobody has topped yet.
Awesome start, can't wait for parts two and three!
Thank you! Yeah, that's very much what I love about it, it's very clever how carefully and gradually the exposition is delivered, nothing is spelled out and I really enjoy that. Half the fun with Darkwood is making sense of it all afterwards.
It's such a shame the studio fell apart, it's wild to drop the best horror game on the market with crazy production values and then just... vanish.
I so appreciate this kind of writing. For one thing, quality critical analysis of video games is hard to come by, but more importantly to me, I lack the spleen to play games like this so I have to make do with second-hand frisson. Looking forward to the continuation.
One pedantic item, actually something like an invitation: I'm quite tired of the phrase Lovecraftian being attached to *all* things Gothic. I invite whoever cares to just say Gothic; it's far more rich and descriptive. Lovecraft, as an author, does not deserve even a tenth of the credit given him. The overwhelming majority of his tales are of underwhelming quality.
I didn't care one way or the other myself, until I heard Nick Groom (aka Prof Goth) give his lecture "Nazgûl Taller than Night" (on YT, do check it out, I'm quite confident it's up your alley.) Now it's one of the hills I will to die on. Gothic is, and has been, way more than HP, and he is frankly a poor exponent.
Although, honestly, I can practically hear the Monty Python Wizzo Chocolate guy, "our sales will plummet!"
Thanks for reading, glad you enjoyed! You never know whether these kinds of pieces will get any traction until you've posted them.
I would definitely agree that Lovecraftian is an overused descriptor, of course there are objectively Lovecraftian works in popular culture (Bloodborne), but it can be used too freely and too often by people who haven't read Lovecraft and don't really get what does or doesn't make something Lovecraftian.
The reason I use the term here is because Darkwood centres on the horror of the unknown, and on a kind of strange unknowable creature at the heart of the woods (we'll get further into that in Part 3). Lovecraft had a folk horror-ish fear of people from the remote isolated countryside (because he was so... profoundly xenophobic), and Darkwood kind of flirts with that, though in a different way and for different reasons.
He was also very big on dreams, which is another area of overlap. Overall, though, I don't go too far into the Lovecraft connection, Part 2 will get into more relevant works.
Fair enough, and "profoundly xenophobic" as a gloss on "deeply racist" is funny enough to me to restrain any further quibbles.
I would just love it if the industry as a whole would abandon the equation Gothic+Tentacles=Lovecraft, Lovecraft+Video Game=Profit! It really stuck in my craw with Skald (an excellent and properly Gothic game,) being called Lovecraftian when there's an entire episode lifted straight from Chambers. And don't even get me started on Dredge.