Dark Train
Quite obscure puzzle game, with an interesting art style.
What drawn me to the game, was the dark atmosphere and art style. What’s really interesting, is that the game was made from paper - yes, from paper. Everything in game is made out of cut out pieces of paper, coloured and stitched together from smaller pieces, so they have depth (although it’s 2D) and movable parts. It really is quite unique, and looking very good. You can check out some “making of” videos if you are interested!
But it’s not only the technique - but also the really dark style shown throughout. Things are dark, sad, scary even. Everything seem very industrial and mechanical - people are shown very rarely, mostly as some background and they don’t even carry any big role in the game. This creates a quite disturbing picture, with all the mechanical accompanying sounds and pretty bad weather (which plays a big role in the game).
Another interesting thing in the game are controls - there are many things to be done in game, and depending on the situation, you are controlling different mechanisms which are operated in their own way. When arriving at new place, you need to make out yourself what is need to be done, or how to do it.
Ok, but what is the game about? Yeah, that’s the thing. The story here is very obscure. I’d even say too obscure for me. It’s not like games need text and lore to be understandable, but I kind of think it went too far here. You are moving in the mentioned Dark Train. But what is your purpose? It seems it’s to move the train forward, while exploring its secrets. The game is mostly based on discovering things yourself and on combinatorics. And it’s both a good thing and a bad thing. I really like the idea of different configurations and requirements for them, so you can explore it yourself and find a solution. But as I said before - I think it went too far a bit. For most of the time, you are absolutely clueless about what to do. And even if you manage to found out some button you didn’t click, or some place you weren’t actually in - you probably still won’t have a clue what to do, or even worse - you went there too early and don’t have required stuff to progress. It gets really frustrating and you actually need to do countless “let me try to click everything” mixed with “let’s try all combinations and hope something will work”.
And it’s not like I need games that are giving everything on your plate - I actually don’t like that many of them are almost completing themselves without using your brain. But here, I even was taking some scatterbrained notes about things, that barely helped me progress further. I don’t know, maybe it’s just me, but I think it went too far with being obscure.
Can I recommend it? Not sure - the atmosphere is really great, and if it wouldn’t be quite creepy and uneasy on you, I would say it is relaxing. Until you get stuck for the 20th time and start being a bit frustrated. But I cannot skip the fact that it actually created an unique atmosphere with pretty interesting gameplay elements.
My rating: 6/10
Playtime: 6h
Tags:
Dark Train on Steam