Dark Hope: A Puzzle Adventure

I was an early alpha tester for this game. The game was riddled with issues and the dev would ignore our feedback (or maybe just didn’t have the means to fix these issues). Then all of a sudden he just went ahead and released the game after a very short dev time, and it shows. Where should I even begin with all the issues? 1.) I’ve seen better menus/text/UI from flash games from the early 2000s. 2.) I don’t really mind bad graphics, but these are like PS1 graphics in 2019, this wasn’t some artistic choice, just very bad. Textures don’t even load properly in the second half of the game. 3.) The animations in the game run VERY slowly. There’s a “puzzle” where you move a mine-cart back and forth several times very slowly. It will drive you insane. Sometimes animations don’t happen if you click too fast and you need to leave the area and come back to reset the puzzle. 4.) Puzzle design is horrible, especially in the second half of the game. No one can finish it without a guide because the puzzles are such that unless you designed them, you can’t figure them out. They have really unfair variables thrown in with no way for you to know even after plenty of experimentation. Seems like n…

This is a solid first-person adventure game where the highlight is the puzzles. The puzzles are relatively hard in that the clues to solve the puzzles require careful observation and note taking. For the most part, I thought the clues, whether presented in explicit notes, or from your own theories of how things work based on experimentation, were quite adequate. Sometimes the clues may be slightly incomplete (I believe by intention, unless I missed a clue) requiring a very small amount, like maybe 5 or 6 attempts of trial and error to get the final solution. Overall I was very satisfied by the puzzles in this game. The quality of the graphics, modelling, textures etc are merely adequate for this day and age, but they get the job done. The game engine allows real-time first person movement (not slide show) but looks like it is a home-brew engine and it is barely serviceable. Movement and animations are clunky, there aren't many options, no invert Y axis etc. This is not a pretty game. The main job of the graphics and engine in this case to is to present the puzzles which are well-integrated into the world. By that I don't mean these are abstract stand-alone puzzles that you've s…

I received this game from the dev to do a lets play on. Parts of this game feel really good and polished and you have a really good sense of accomplishment after solving it. Other parts are needlessly complicated and even when I was looking up a guide on what to do was struggling to complete it. There were parts I loved because I felt like I was smart enough to solve them (Ie the base 4 stuff) and then they threw a wrench at me by making the dials change each other... weren't all the tricks up to that point already enough!?! I spent 5.5 hours playing this game and honestly I don't think I would have EVER solved this one without some assistance from guides. There is just too many tricks layered on top of each other. All in all if you hate yourself and want to become extremely frustrated I would recommend picking this up as it will entertain you for hours. However if you don't like slowly torturing yourself then perhaps leave this one..

I got this game for a couple of dollars on sale. I was already expecting it to be very unpolished from other reviews but figured it could be an interesting experience anyway. I got stuck, resorted to a guide and then learned that the reason i was stuck was that certain blank notes were supposed to actually contain numbers and clues necessary to progress. Bad graphics, lag, glitchy lighting and occasionally broken audio is possibly tolerable. Being unplayable is not. Don't buy at any price.

I played for a half an hour and the game seems kind of broken. I apparently randomly solved the bio lab puzzle? All I did was randomly punch numbers, and I came back and the door was open. I got an achievement for shooting lasers when I didn't even turn on the machine that shoots the lasers. I bought this game on a whim because it was $0.99, but you might need to advertise this as early access, it feels kind of broken and I haven't even played that much. It actually seems kind of fun, but when puzzles are solving themselves for no reason, it kind of defeats the purpose of the game.

The game shows promise, and I will be looking for anything that the dev puts out in the future. However, unless you have some god like patience and enjoy doing math/science I don't recommend this game. Even if you do decide to play it, I strongly recommend using a guide. Graphics are okay. They're very, very simple and at points have some amount of charm to them. Nothing special, but they're not so poorly done that you'll be left wondering what something is supposed to be. The environment is done well enough that I wasn't disappointed with it until the very end, where it is drastically changed. Overall they're not good enough to be considered iconic, but not bad enough to be called ugly. The gameplay is mediocre. The game does a really good job of making you feel like there's something dangerous out there, but you are at no time in a position where you need to hide or run from something. Hell, even the strange disembodied shadow that lurks around in one area will completely ignore you, and can't hurt you even if you go out of your way to run into it. Similarly, the occasional anomaly that does happen can be safely ignored as well. The game also has a fair amount of jank to it, f…