A Walk in the Dark Reviews

This is surely a good game. The art is really cool. But the gameplay of it is so awful. The girl's hitbox is never understandable and just annoying. Also the difficulties of maps are so unbalanced; usually completing the map is too easy but collecting shine of it is too challenging. Many shines are placed right above or left side of spikes but the hitbox of it makes it too difficult. The gameplay is not that creative; it's just copy of worse gameplay of Super Meat Boy or VVVVVV.

A national game, and a good one. If you are into games like Limbo, Nihilumbra, etc... It is certainly not a casual game, far from it, it is hard and challenging, totally not meant to spend a relaxing time. I couldn't go past level 95, to be honest, it gets tiring to try hard all the time, but congratulations to everyone who manages to finish it. The soundtrack and the art, on the other hand, are beautifully executed.

This is a perfectly designed game, but a terribly programmed one. The level designs are clever and interesting, with what should be a steady difficulty curve, but movement--particularly jumping--feels drunken and ungainly. * The forward momentum of a typical jump is about equivalent to Shovel Knight's forward momentum when he's jumping in the direction of a strong wind *Hitboxes extend out so far, you can die by jumping straight up when there are spikes on a platform to the side of you. *The wall jump tends to be more of a wall headbutt, followed by an immediate fall onto spikes. Every level plays like the aerial equivalent of an ice level, and that's simply unworkable for what's clearly supposed to be a twitch platformer requiring precise control. On the rare occasions this game works, it works beautifully. I don't think I've ever seen a game cry out this hard for a tool-assisted speedrun. But if you simply want a fun, challenging platformer, play . . . well, any of the games it rips off besides Limbo.

In this challenging platformer you get to be a cat named Bast. Your best friend (owner?), a girl, is whisked away by a creature akin to grim reaper and you have find her. To do this you have to run, jump and crawl through 100 levels of increasing difficulty, all with high contrast graphics similar to Limbo. There are actually three different kinds of levels. In all of them you have to reach the light at the end of the obstacle course of a level. Cat levels are the most numerous of the bunch. They are the basic platforming levels where you, the cat, can run, jump and wall-jump through the dungeons filled with lethal spikes, playful porcupines, levitating spike balls and moving saw blades and spear traps. Later on there are crumbling, disappearing and reappearing, occasionally sharp-edged platforms to watch out for and also happy swinging giant spiders and cannons with both regular and homing bullets to dodge. Spiky death is pretty much guaranteed. Second kinds of levels are the girl levels. Girl is trapped in a spirit world, filled with (surprise!) spikes and saw blades and other lethal things I already mentioned. However, for an unknown reason she can jump to the ceiling and back at will. This being the only thing she can do the game pumps a lot of levels out of the simple movement mechanics and both stationary and moving traps. The third and the most frustrating level type (for me) are the cave levels. In these the cat moves with the same jump-up-and-down mechanics as the girl but running constantly. Precision jumps are easy enough in the early levels but later on they have to be made within a tiny fraction of a second, quickly accumulating tiring deaths. Sometimes you also have to crawl under deathly spikes, bullets or those sneaky, swigging spiders. Frankly, I disliked the cave levels a lot because the speed makes the imperfect hitboxes significant. Also, why must Bast suddenly run when s/he was fine with careful jumps before? Fortunately, there are only some 20 cave levels, so they are in the minority. Most levels are quite short, lasting just some 10-20 seconds. You get an achievement for par-timing all levels, which is fairly difficult but gets easier as you learn to control both characters. There's also a shiny collectable in each level. Cave running levels don't have par-times, instead requiring you to beat them on the first go. That sounds evil but it's a bluff because you can just try the level again from the level selection screen after each failure to try again. After beating the game there are ten more challenge (cat platforming) levels to beat that are even more difficult than the story levels. Fortunately they are not required for the acquirement of the ultimate achievement: Ninja Cat. To get that you have to beat the game without dying more than 10 times. It's a very difficult and frustrating achievement despite that you can beat the game in around half an hour. Unfortunately, the last few of the cave running levels have speed sections that lag the game to a halt, making it jerky with a framerate less than 10. This makes those very precision-heavy levels virtually unplayable. I know this is a problem with my system but I have tried the game on three different computers, a laptop and two desktops, all of which have this same problem (and AMD Radeon type cards that are probably to blame). It makes the Ninja Cat tries a true pain. For some reason the levels work alright when I first start the game but not if I play through all the levels. All in all, A Walk in the Dark is a very challenging platformer. Granted, sometimes the deaths become really annoying as the hitboxes don't exactly match the graphics, but it's worth its present price (6 €) and can often be grabbed for half that on a sale.

I'll recommend this because this is a game done right: - It's fun, fast-paced and gives you a challenge. - Not repetitive, different game modes. - Filled with content: 100 levels and 10 bonus challenges. - Except for finishing the level, you face 3 other challenges per level: 1) Finishing without dying 2) catching the shiny and 3) finishing under the par time. - Good Music - Nice Visual Style - Responsive Controls 9.5/10

Right off the bat: if you've played other platformers, you know how important good controls are in making the game challenging but rewarding. This game has absolutely terrible controls. Far too floaty and overly responsive, with the slightest touch sending you flying far further than feels intuitive, and the hit detection on obstacles is a fair bit larger than seems warranted. With a good platformer, your deaths feel like your own fault, but here most of mine have felt like the result of the poor game mechanics. As others have mentioned, the music and visuals are well presented, although I wouldn't call them extraordinary. Pretty disappointing.

This game is like a combination of Super Meat Boy and Limbo. It borrows the art style from Limbo and takes the fast paced element from Super Meat Boy. Atleast that's how i see it. The game features two, very different characters with two very different play mechanics: a cat named Bast and the girl whose name i don't currently remember. This game is really , really , really frustrating. Even to the point that you just want to keep on playing it. You find yourself faceplanting youself into spiky walls and other obstacles and finally nailing a level after 357 tries is absolutely rewarding. Only thing that really bothers me, is the fact that the controls are really wonky and "the agile cat" doesn't have any air control whatsoever. 9.5/10 , go buy it and get frustrated.

Insanely good game. It's difficult, interesting and didn't bore me one bit! The soundtracks are amazing and very well fitting. It makes you think deeply how to tackle certain situations in the fastest way. Usually while playing games I zone out and think about other things while I play it. However A Walk in the Dark had my full on attention the entire time. I am very glad I bought it. Running around as a cat is the best. 10/10

[quote] Generaly - it's an amazing game, but developer did everything to poison it by adding "Cave" levels... [h1]It's about:[/h1] [list] [*] jumping, catching the right rhythm to beat a level; [*] pushing the button [i]in right [b]microsecond[/b][/i] on "Cave" levels. [/list] [h1]Why you should play this:[/h1] [list] [*] you like challenging platformer games; [*] nice and attractive style: simplistic, but eye-grabbing; [*] good level-design (except "Cave" levels) - it's different for both main characters: for the cat it's mostly jumping and catching the rhythm, for the girl it's about some kind of floating between "floor" and "ceiling" - like plumet on the wind; [*] cat's "jumping" realisation - brief/light push for short/quick jump, lasting/hard push for long/amplitude jump - lets you manipulate with covered distance and gives you a feeling that you truly control as light on foot, flexible and elastic animal as cat. [/list] [h1]Why you may not like it:[/h1] [list] [*] "Cave" levels - it's the real curse for this game: it's not even a gaming/playing/face a challenge at all, it's some kind of reaction training: you [i]have to push the button in right [b]microsecond[/b][/i]; [*] absence of check points: for the most of levels it's ok - they can be beat after few tries, but its absence on "Cave" levels devours you with a wave of frustration: you probably will go through dozens desperate attempts to find that right microsecond when you need to push the button. [/list] [i]Nice, but controversial gaming experience: it's true representer of platformer genre, but you have to be ready for truly suffering on "Cave" levels - otherwise, it's a wall-thrown keyboard/gamepad and strong words to developers and their relatives.[/i] [/quote]

I want to like this game so much, but I can't. The music and art direction are phenomenal, and create a unique atmosphere that few games can achieve; but the game itself was just not well developed. I love challenging platformers, but the engine and physics of this game were programmed to screw you over. I'd estimate a whopping 90% of all deaths are the fault of the game, not the player. And that's being lenient. Sometimes the levels can be really fun, but often they're just not. Not unfun in a challenging sort of way. Unfun in an I-can't-control-my-fricking-character sort of way way. The only thing that really keeps me playing is the amazing visuals and music. It confuses me as to how some parts of a game's design (music and graphics) can be so top-notch, and other parts (such as engine and physics) can be disastrous. I mean, the game's not broken because of glitches (I barely encountered any); the game's broken because it was [i]programmed[/i] that way.