Dark Mystery Demo

Most puzzle games are designed to be both challenging and fun at the same time, but the formula is far from easy to pull off. In essence, the goal of a puzzle is to put your mind to work in a creative way, but sometimes the developers miss the point and the whole thing turns into a chore instead. Thus, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that many puzzle games are the exact opposite of fun.

Dark Mystery is a puzzle platformer in which you play the role of a furry black blob as it goes on a quest through a dark world in order to rescue his queen from some great evil. The gameplay mechanics are a combination of physics puzzles and light platforming, with an emphasis on precise jumps and demanding obstacles that require you to have good reflexes.

Don’t expect too much in terms of story, since every part of it is mostly there as a filler. On the other hand, that is not always important in the genre, at least as long as the mechanics are enjoyable. Unfortunately, that is not the case here, since everything feels very unpolished and rushed, especially in terms of level design, controls and the puzzles themselves.

Most of your time is spent jumping and double-jumping in order to avoid holes full of spikes and various other traps. Precision is required sometimes, but the mechanics are not polished enough to allow that, so you have to base everything on luck and patience instead. You can jump on top of some enemies to destroy them, but others are not so easy to overcome. There’s no way to tell which is which, on the other hand, so you will certainly die a lot until you figure things out.

The graphics are inspired by Limbo, which means everything is mostly black and rather bleak. However, there are splashes of color as well, which doesn’t really make sense, not to mention the questionable appearance of it all. The music is not bad, but it doesn’t go very well with the theme or the mood of the game.

Dark Mystery could have achieved a lot more with the elements at its disposal, but it turned out to be a very unpolished product. Thus, the annoying controls, bad level design and flawed mechanics make it very difficult to enjoy yourself.