Blinding Dark Demo

Horror games are usually created to inspire fear and make the players feel uneasy at all times, which is why it’s such a thrill to play them. However, it’s not enough to fill the levels with jump scares and skeletons, because the gimmick gets old and you can only use it a few times before the players get bored. Hence, psychological horror works a lot better to keep the mood constant.

Blinding Dark is an interesting project that aims to blend two very iconic titles in the genre, namely Amnesia the Dark Descent and Clive Barker’s Undying. In case you are not familiar with them, then you should know that while Amnesia is much more atmospheric, and it actually doesn’t feature any kind of weapons, Undying is all about blasting evil creatures with all sorts of guns. Hence, the combination is definitely unusual.

What the developers tried to do was to include all the action and the fun from Undying along with the puzzles and the thick atmosphere from Amnesia. Granted, this is a very early project and there’s still a lot to go, but the idea is not exactly tantalizing. In fact, the magic of Amnesia was the fact that you never knew what haunted you and you couldn’t fight back, while with Undying it was the complete opposite.

Even so, the puzzles can keep you busy for a while, especially of you enjoy combining objects and looking for items throughout the levels. On the other hand, they break up the action and they might annoy those who are in it for the fragging. Thankfully, the level design is quite nice and you can admire a variety of creepy places along the way.

Speaking of which, the graphics engine is not the sharpest out there, but it has enough power to create a nice atmosphere and render nice post-processing effects. It may be a bit too dark to see anything at times, but that’s part of the fun and you can live through some pretty exciting moments while rummaging through dark corridors.

All things considered, Blinding Dark is not brilliant and a lot more work is needed to make the idea feasible somehow. However, there’s a real chance for this to turn into something worth playing, at least if the developers get their priorities straight.