A Step Into Darkness

Every now and again a game comes along that manages to create its own sub-genre, which in turn inspires many more developers to follow the example and put out a multitude of variations on the theme. Granted, this can sometimes turn into a copycat contest, which makes it difficult to find good games when everyone is just trying to leech onto the success of the original.

A Step Into Darkness is a first-person horror game in which you play the role of a supernatural investigator as he goes into a forest and tries to find evidence regarding a mysterious killer. Although the story kicks off pretty nicely, it’s a bit of a bummer to realize that this is just a Slenderman clone in most aspects, except with more bugs and annoying level design.

The story starts with the main character being called to his office in order to receive a new task, but he is against going into a particular forest where people disappear without a trace. However, his boss promises to pay for his girl’s treatment, which quickly convinces him somehow. Naturally, nothing about this is properly explained, so the story as a whole can be ignored without losing too much in the process.

Your main goal is to explore the forest in search of tapes, and every time you find a tape the villain starts coming after you. You can use the flashlight to move around the forest, but it’s important to conserve battery life or as long as possible. On the other hand, the poor lighting makes it easy to move around with ease without ever using the flashlight.

You lose whenever you face the killer/monster, but there are so many bugs in this regard that the whole experience is ruined. Hence, sometimes you lose without even laying eyes on the killer, while other times you just see him standing still like a statue. The graphics are also fairly disappointing for this day and age, and although the voice acting is almost decent, the sound recording is poor to say the least.

In the end, there are not many things that make A Step Into Darkness an enjoyable experience, but the background story has some potential, at least if the writers do a better job of integrating it with the gameplay.