Horror games were seldom seen on handhelds during the ‘90s, with even Capcom cancelling a Game Boy Color conversion of Resident Evil due to the belief that it would cease to be scary when played on a small screen. Skip forward to 2025, and the humble Switch is on the receiving end of horror games on a weekly basis. In a weird way Dead of Darkness sees us come full circle, as the original Resident Evil is its strongest influence – only it’s pixel art that’s the order of the day here, just like the cancelled Resident Evil that Game Boy owners never (officially) saw.
Set in 1985, we’re introduced to Miles Windham – a private investigator who immediately comes across as rather angsty and easily irritated. Considering their young daughter is missing, it isn’t hard to comprehend why. A fresh lead takes them to Velvet Island, home to a large extended family – with some more hospitable than others, and each with secrets they’re keen not to divulge. The island features several large well-lived in structures, and over the course of this 12-15 hour adventure you’ll get to explore them all thoroughly, including the depths below.
As mentioned, Dead of Darkness is presented using pixel art. It skews more towards 8-bit than 16-bit and is remarkably consistent in quality throughout. Some flourishes we’ve come to expect are absent – there are no idle animations, for instance – but everything is well drawn and distinguishable. The horrors that eventually make themselves known are appropriately freakish – instead of zombies, we’re up against wrinkled flesh-coloured monstrosities – and they satisfyingly explode into showers of gore when pumped full of lead. Cut-scenes meanwhile are fully voiced, with many lines delivered with a genuine sense of panic and/or urgency, while character portraits are in HD, conveying a range of emotions. Despair and anger, mostly.
Although there are no reminders of the current objective, preferring to keep handholding to a minimum, progress is still mostly straightforward, settling into a groove at an early stage. Your task is to explore the island’s multifloored structures (two mansions and a memorial hospital, along with a farmhouse, guest/beach houses plus their accompanying grounds) in search of clues, documents, puzzle components, and keys that’ll allow you to progress further or access new floors entirely. One reoccurring theme is to gather multiple objects, be it books or stone tablets, and insert them correctly to unlock a new area. It’s also possible to ‘ponder’ certain clues, which will give you information that can be used to progress, such as door codes or the whereabouts of a secret button. This idea isn’t too well explained, essentially being an extra step of inventory maintenance, and so it may result in head scratching upon being introduced. It does successfully add an extra layer to the investigative aspect, however.
Progress must be saved manually, with save rooms sensibly placed and routinely containing storage lockers. Inventory management plays an important part, as Miles is only able to carry eight items at once. This includes weapons (with the assortment limited to a pistol, shotgun and knife – albeit upgradeable) and their corresponding ammo, plus painkillers/health packs and items that can remove poison/bleeding statuses. Dashing back to a save room to retrieve an item or offload surplus ammo isn’t uncommon. On the easier difficulties (there’s even a ‘very easy’ setting for those inexperienced with the genre) ammo is in abundance, including boxes of 30+ pistol rounds. Finding one of these usually means a boss fight is imminent.
A few thoughtful touches are present, helping to keep you on track. Particularly invaluable is the map as it shows which rooms have been explored fully and those that have something yet to resolve – such as a room with a partly solved puzzle – in addition to which (colour coded) doors are yet to be unlocked. The mansions are logically designed, with few rooms alike, and most containing something interesting or useful. Upon entering a room, everything interactable can be highlighted with a button press too, making it tricky to overlook something important.
While enemies are high in number – with a couple of surprise ambushes to endure – the AI of the monstrous adversaries is a little dim, in the sense that the basic foes can be trapped behind a table or similar while you explore undeterred. Stronger enemies simply make a beeline to your location when entering a room. Handily, if you back out of a door and re-enter they’ll revert to their ‘starting position’ instead of grouping around the door – and most will let out a growl or snarl to make their presence known. Jump scares are used sparingly and to good effect, while boss battles help to bring areas to a conclusion. They aren’t too challenging as very few have attack patterns to learn (most bosses simply stomp around or follow behind Miles) yet it’s still quite satisfying to take them down, and their designs are delightfully outlandish.
During the story’s second half the difficulty raises slightly by plunging things into darkness, with just a small lantern to light the path ahead. Minor frustrations can occur here, with enemies appearing almost out of nowhere – including a unique adversary that can kill with one hit. Other frustrations are relatively few, as on the whole Dead of Darkness is very cleverly designed. You’ll get to revisit past locations and reach areas previously inaccessible, while the guest house is intended to be explored gradually, requiring surplus lockpicks and keys hidden across the island. Weapon upgrades are used as rewards for exploring further than necessary, while combat has a degree of tact. Taking out enemies in arm’s reach uses less ammo than dealing with them further away, while the knife will conserve ammo outright but is a risky proposition.
In fact, the only major downside to Dead of Darkness – other than its brainless beasts – is that it’s rather long winded. Fatigue set in around the 10 hour mark, specifically when more labyrinth-like underground locations started to feature, and I was surprised to learn that I had another 3-5 hours left to playthrough. That said, the game’s long runtime is something that prevents it from feeling casual and throwaway; in terms of its duration and scope, it’s able to match the Resident Evil games not just of yore but the more recent likes of Resident Evil: Revelations too. This isn’t something to blitz through in an evening or two, but something meaty and time consuming to become deeply invested in. Don’t be quick to judge it on looks alone, as it’s able to deliver quite a substantial slice of survival horror.
Retroficion’s Dead of Darkness is out now on consoles. A PC version launched in 2024. Published by eastasiasoft.