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 blocked by some puzzles that require you to make use of a number of mysterious picture frames that you find and also drops of ember – bright shining orbs that power strange devices and move obstacles. A certain amount of platforming is needed to progress and it is here that the game sometimes falls down (or at least the character does…) as falling sends you back to the beginning of the section and can become frustrating – even with updates to improve collision detection.
The first of the frames you find reveals hidden objects and handholds on walls, whilst the next is used to destroy the skulking enemies who try to sabotage you by stealing ember. Later ones have other specific powers which I won’t spoil here and there a number of areas that force you to switch between them to progress. The overall loop is therefore set but the different frames do allow for a decent amount of variety within what could have been a very straight forward walking sim setup.
Storytelling here is kept to a minimum in order to ensure that you constantly feel on edge, but the mood is more of suspense than straight out horror. Throughout the levels you’ll occasionally come across computer desks which can be interacted with to read chat logs and listen to the eponymous podcasts. This slow drip feed of information is effective and even by the game’s ending there are questions left to ponder.