The user immediately begins playing without an initial title screen and direction, leaving the user confused but in an immediate sense of wonder. You can tell right away that the small team of developers truly cared about the atmosphere of this game to immerse the player, especially after a massive redesign that the game underwent. The aesthetics are desolating and beautiful. Desperate to escape, Lloyd must withstand the many obstacles of his mind to return to the waking world, bending the laws of physics to manipulate the dream world to devise ways not to be caught by enemies and solve various puzzles to survive.ĭarq immediately immerses you in the bleak monochromatic dreamworld, starting in the Lloyd’s (the protagonist) home. Lloyd explores throughout his dream, giving in by his subconscious that turns into a nightmare. You play a lanky teenage protagonist named Lloyd who becomes aware that he is dreaming. Let’s get out of the business drama and down to the game nitty-gritty. He seems like a pretty stand-up guy to me! Lloyd begins his story of entering into his nightmare. I believe this drama exposes the double standard of Epic Games that money doesn’t always bring happiness to the individual or the company despite it, possibly helping long-term. Gamers may forgive, but they never forget. The indie developer of Unfold Games realized that he would be losing quite a good chunk of change but his morality and integrity of breaking a promise after so many years to the players, who expected to purchase the game on Steam would have ruined his credibility before it even started meant much more to him. If Wlad did accept the Epic Games offer, then Darq would have been pulled immediately from release from the Steam store and put exclusively into the Epic Games Store. A 28% increase in pay is a good chunk of change for developers to miss out on, given the same platform benefits! Who could refuse that offer? This appears to be the strategy Epic Games plans on sticking with for a while, and I know why, it’s because it’s working. Now, that’s a pretty good deal if I don’t say so myself. It’s not unheard of that some corporations go to war with each other in this dog-eat-dog gaming world, but Epic Games has been offering developers better terms for their games, offering developers 88% in revenue, instead of the 60% like Steam, according to Gameinformer and Polygon. The controversial issue behind Epic Games is that it has been offering exclusive deals to developers to not put their content in the Steam Store and only their own, providing better margins for the developers to make more money. For those of you who are unfamiliar with Epic Games, it released high-grossing games, such as Fortnite, which drove revenue over $2.5B in 2018 with over 250M active players, growing Epic Games closer in size to Steam’s creator, Valve. In the first week of August, Epic Games Inc offered Wlad Marhulets, the sole developer behind Unfold Games, for Darq to be exclusively distributed in the Epic store and not on Steam, according to PCGamer. Was Darq worth the three-year wait and did it live up to the trailer? Let’s find out.īefore I get into the details of Darq gameplay, I wanted to provide some interesting insight into the game’s distribution drama. Darq appears to profoundly borrow concepts from other games, such as, ‘Little Nightmares’ and ‘Limbo.’ If you enjoyed those games, just as much as I did, then Darq is right up your alley! You can watch and compare both the original trailer here and the most recent released trailer here. It has been three years since the initial release of that trailer, and quite a bit has changed, but the game ultimately surpassed my expectations. In the fall of 2016, ‘ Unfold Games’ released a teaser trailer for a puzzle-platform based psychological horror that blew me away.
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