Darkout Review

Oh hey there Terraria Clone!

This 2D action/adventure survival game developed by Allgraf has some pretty high ratings on Steam so I thought I'd pick it up. Firstly, the tutorial is okay, it tells you what to do but doesn't show you where some things are and is fairly minimal in most areas. The graphics are dark, even with the torches there will be a lot of squinting and "I can't see what block that is." Players will take the roll of a character whose space ship has crash landed on a strange planet. They aim to survive whilst being able to upgrade sciences,weapons and everything in between. There is hostile mobs and cave systems and everything you'd expect from this kind of game.

(please ignore the stupidity that F10 brings up the world seed)

Graphics are pretty but it is hard to see most of them due to the darkness of the night time of the game. Now I'll go into what I find are huge problems. You start with a basic set of tools which as far as I've seen do not require upgrading at all. While some players will think this is a bonus, I call it babying the player. To a audience who will undoubtedly be familiar with Terraria and Minecraft, upgrades and crafting is a well known and highly beneficial game mechanic. Another problem is using the tools. To clear dirt blocks, the game often chooses to clear 3 blocks in a cluster which makes it semi-impossible to create a flat landscape. Then there is the scientific and system upgrade features which to me seem like this genre is being mixed into a genre which it doesn't belong in. The darkness for cave entries looks exactly the same as the dirt blocks so I found myself falling down into a cave that I couldn't get out of as I couldn't see the place I fell in. This is a massive problem.

 Now comes the biggest problem. It is essentially a more expensive yet worse Terraria. The entire rilliance of that game was its simplicity and blocky art style. This is a slightly more 3D inspired version which want to be more advanced. More advanced does not work for this game type. As a non-paid reviewer, it annoys me most when I pay out for a game that promises so much yet lets me down. As indie titles go, this is one to stay clear of. 3/10