The Dark Inside Me Demo

Disclaimer: The Dark Inside Me is packed with mature content, including nudity, excessive violence and gore.

It’s one thing to scream from a jump scare and maybe shake for a few seconds, but some things creep up on you without a clear warning. Hence, you might find yourself unable to sleep, which is why true horror games do not rely too much on shock and gore. On the other hand, if it is used right, gore has the potential to leave some emotional scars as well.

The Dark Inside Me is not your regular horror flick, because it tries very hard to turn your stomach upside down with every chance it gets. It’s not just a gore fest, however, since it features an intricate and deep background story, which is bound to capture your interest. The cherry on top of it all is the fact that it features classic point-and-click mechanics, which means puzzles and slow gameplay, in most cases.

Story-wise, it all starts with a man who wakes up in a hospital one day, without remembering how he got there or why. As it happens, he hears some police officers talking about him outside, saying something about how sick and disturbed he is. Throughout the game, one of the goals it to fight your inner demons and get to the bottom of the mystery, although the developers assure us that there is more than one playable character included and a lot of story branches to explore.

There are a few issues with the current demo, but it’s only natural for this to be the case, since it’s merely an alpha build meant to convince their Kickstarter supporters. However, you can pretty much figure out how everything works from the first few seconds, since the mechanics are the same as in every other point-and-click adventure game. Glitches may prevent you from making proper use of some items, but you can work around them with a bit of determination.

As far as the visual quality is concerned, the game looks truly amazing, especially when it comes to level design, characters and cutscenes. Sure, the environments are actually static and not rendered in real-time, but that doesn’t make them any less beautiful. The atmosphere benefits a lot from the dark visual style, not to mention the gloomy soundtrack playing in the background at all times.

Although everyone promises a “dynamic story progression” nowadays, The Dark Inside Me seems to be onto something in this case. It’s too early to tell whether such promises are going to materialize in the final game, but the developers certainly deserve a chance to finish their creation and let us decide.

Notice: The Dark Inside Me has a Kickstarter campaign dedicated to it, and you can participate in the development process by donating a certain sum of money. Each donation is rewarded, so you can truly feel like helping a good cause.