Dark Hope: A Puzzle Adventure Reviews

Great game. Puzzles are very hard however!

Interesting puzzles hard to get into at the beginning but worth persevering so far.

Part of this game is played in a "steampunk" version of an R&D laboratory, and part in a futuristic setting. I especially enjoyed the "steampunk" setting and puzzles.

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.

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.

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, from very poor and drawn out animations to a lot of frame skipping. The only good side about the gameplay is that you don't have an incredibly slow walk and run speed. The puzzles are a different story. it feels like every one is made less fun by some feature that could have been easily fixed or removed. Expect a lot of needless backtracking through the same areas for some, waiting for slow animations to finish for others, or just a long period of messing around with puzzles to finally understand what you need to do to beat them. Of note, two puzzles stand out. One is a color puzzle that requires the use of two different spectrometers, and anyone who's never used one would practically be lost without a guide. The second requires you to make several calculations where you convert numbers from base 10 to base 4, and input them into a frankly unusable number system. Why the dev thought that this puzzle was a good idea is a mystery to me. The story is, sadly, largely unimportant and uncompelling. Overall, I don't recommend this game. None of the aspects of it are done well enough or are unique enough to really justify spending time with it. A lot of the puzzles are fun, but there are just as many that are turned into a needless waiting game or leave you wondering what the actual problem to solve is, while others are going to require that you have some formal knowledge with mathematics and science to solve. Exploring the compound wasn't very special either, as a lot of the more interesting parts of it are left both unexplained and unimportant. Honestly, I feel a bit disappointed having looked forwards to this game for some time.

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 seen before, but rather science or math based puzzles plausibly related to the game world. There is a story told through in-game notes and journals that are fun to read and add to the sci fi/ steampunk atmosphere. More importantly, the in-game texts often provide vital clues. I did run into one bug that prevented me from picking up an item. I spent a frustrating two days combing through the game world for something else I thought I had missed that was blocking my progress. I eventually broke down and consulted a walk through which made it clear that I had run into a bug. I posted a question on the forum and within a day or two the dev confirmed it was a bug and within another day or so fixed it. If you like hard but fair logic/science/math based puzzles in a sci-fi atmosphere and don't mind looking at dated graphics and using a rather clunky game engine, then is I strongly recommend this game. I certainly enjoyed my time with it.

Positive: - Some of the puzzles are brilliant, I had tons of fun in the final part of the game with the math puzzles. Unfortunately puzzles like these are getting more and more uncommon in recent games. - The game definitely does not hold your hand during solving puzzles, it encourages exploration and deductive reasoning. That is always nice. - Atmosphere has the right amount of creepiness. Negative: - Some of the puzzles are criminally under clued. Hence you need to do a lot of random guessing, to the point that it gets frustrating. The game would definitely benefit from more text (journals, diagrams etc.) and hints. - Exploration is severely hindered by the interface. You character can walk fast, but the interactions with the environment is super slow. Hence trying out new ideas take forever... This is the biggest weakness of the game. - Story and setting seemed interesting but you don't get to learn much about it. Like my previous point, it would have been great to have more journals (or audio logs or something like that) so that we could learn more about this facility and their experiment. - It is a bit short, feels like 60% of a full game. Conclusion: Dark hope is a mixed bag, some of the puzzles are great but the interface and lack of clues prevents the game from reaching its full potential. I would recommend it anyway, since it is very difficult to comes across games like these in recent times. If you are a puzzle adventure lover, this game will scratch your itch, The designer is definitely talented, I will be watching out for his new games.

Ive got 14 hours invested in this puzzle game. The vast majority of that has been spent wondering around scratching my head trying to figure out some kind of logic to progress. It's REALLY REALLY tough so do not expect quick progress. Having had to revert to clues from this steam discussion page and on Discord where the dev has to help people progress with hints, for me I need a few more in-game prompts to allow me to progress without feeling I am unable to continue without external assistance. I dont have a brain the size of a planet. If you are looking for a game that enables progressively harder quick puzzles that start off easy and get tougher but that you kindof learn the concepts, then this game is not for you. If you want a game that allows you to just sit there pondering life feeling your brain twist in your scull and have plenty of time on your hands with little to show for it, then give it a go. Its obvious the dev is a very clever egg head and thought deeply about the puzzle concepts to be not simply spoon fed. Its a deep thinkers game and one that I wish I was up to completing with a sense of satisfaction to be able to recommend it, but I have given up part way through with completing it as I feel I am needing too much external forum help to be able to make it seem like it was ME that completed it.