I got into Darkwood randomly, with zero expectations, and as such I was extremely surprised that it turned out to be such an absolute gem. The game is a survival horror, but unlike all survival horror games I've played it really has some focus on survival, rather than being an action game with resource management.
So, you're probably wondering — what is it that you have to survive? Darkwood takes place in one of the most dangerous places on earth, namely the Polish countryside. A provincial region was overgrown by the woods, a forest so thick that it rendered the area completely cut off from the outside world. The goal of the game is to escape, however it is not easy, since the forest has strong regenerative powers, making it near impossible to cut down or burn the trees.
The gameplay loop is rather simple. Darkwood has an open world separated into a few locations, each with its own hideout. In each hideout there's a workbench and a stove. You can't survive the night outside of the hideouts because you always have to be breathing that sweet sweet stove gas (for inexplicable reasons). During the day you set out to explore and scavenge new locations. The map is premade, but most loot and enemy placement is randomized.
Once the night sets in, you need to turn on the lights in your hideout at the cost of gasoline (you can theoretically survive without light, but do you really want to try?) and hide in your house. During the night enemies storm your hideout and weird things happen. To prepare your base for this, you can use up your resources to build traps, barricade windows and repair doors. If you manage to survive and scout out the entire location, you can move out to the next biome and the next hideout to follow the plot.
Some of the most common enemies in the game include dogs and savages, in Poland known as residents of Podlasie. Since Darkwood is a survival horror, the combat system is insanely intricate. In 90% of cases the person who shoots first, wins. There's just one problem - there's more enemies than bullets.
Now as for why the game is worth your time:
The aforementioned nights are always tense. Remember that feeling of your first night in Minecraft, when you are just digging a hole and BEGGING for no monster to enter it. Now imagine this turned into an entire game. You hide in a corner of your room, with whatever poor weapons you have in your hand, looking around nervously and hoping no one enters (monsters react to sound and otherwise walk randomly, so you never know when and if they come). And once you think you have all the tools and think you're strong, there are also many weird rare events, so you never really know if you've seen it all (spoiler: you didn't)
Sound design is amazing. It's mostly ambience and sound effects, but holy cow, you really can hear everything. From the footsteps of your character, through the random sticks breaking below your feet, all the way to breath of NPCs. And the weird sounds during the night again remind me of Minecraft cave noises... if they actually meant something.
Writing and character design is stellar. Every NPC looks completely different and absolutely stunning. Along with their mannerisms and character, they feel quite alive. I'm rarely invested into video game characters, in most games they fail to make me feel much, but in Darkwood, despite the fact that most NPCs are two dimensional at most, I managed to get invested into their stories quite a lot. Someone in the reviews said that the game's artist is up right there with Giger and I couldn't agree more. Along with Machinarium it immediately landed among one of my favorite games when it comes to art. It reminds me of the 2000s to early 2010s games in which a naturalistic (in literary meaning) fantasy art style was very popular among indie devs.
The plot, oh my god, THE LORE. Darkwood might have some of the best hidden storytelling ever. The majority of the story has to be figured out by connecting NPC dialogue, notes and items found everywhere (there are tens of them) and environmental storytelling. The lore is in my view by far the best aspect of the game - everything you find is connected to something else, sometimes something you find 5 minutes later, sometimes something you find 5 hours later, and sometimes to something you already found, but haven't realized it yet. Basically every character ever mentioned can be found, alive, malformed or dead. I wish I could tell you more, but spoiling it would be criminal. In comparison to other games with vague lore, I really love that in Darkwood at the end everything is actually 100% explained. Yes, you have to do a lot of connecting stuff (or digging around the forums with people who did), but it all actually makes sense and was written with the intention of making sense.
The game takes place in People's Republic of Poland, and references to real Polish culture are scattered all throughout the game. They're mostly in the background - magazines, ration cards, furniture, etc. As a Pole I find it pretty cute to find the exact same floor pattern my grandma has in a video game. It's also refreshing to see any other country than the US or Russia represented in a video game. Sure, countries like Germany or the UK also appear commonly, but if they do the authors almost never even try to make any research about their cultures and just copy US or Soviet stereotypes. One such example is Half Life 2 which takes place in Bulgaria, but does not contain any things Bulgarian except for the language.
As for the problems with the game:
The game has a lot of walking between locations. Considering that you need to go back to your hideout semi-often, this means there's lots of walking times two. While this can get boring, it is also necessary for the build up of atmosphere, as during these walks you can still get ambushed by enemies or take damage from hazards. This is also when the sound design really shines, as you try to hear whether enemies are setting up an attack.
There are multiple dream scenes that lock you out of content permanently if you do them wrong. There's no way to prepare, and no way to know the consequences. Luckily there's only one dream with serious consequences, but even this left me with a bad taste in my mouth (mini spoiler: it's the one after entering a train carriage). After I learned of it I started watching playthroughs of dreams to make sure I don't miss any more unlocks, which sucked.
Once you get enough equipment the game begins to get too easy. It's true that nights are always tense and you never know what is going to happen, but at the end game no matter what does you're likely to shred it with your guns blazing anyway. Again, the note about weird events is both a pro and a con. Yes, there's a lot of cool events, but some of them appear very very rarely, and few of those make survival harder. The game's difficulty settings also don't fix this, as they only change the death penalty.
All in all, if you like survival horror or the story interests you I highly recommend giving Darkwood a try.