No one really wants to be stalked. Especially if the stalker is a lunatic. But many do think about it, and some crave it altogether. You could call it a perverse propensity of human nature, our lust for horrible things in our media and entertainment.
Everbyte Studio’s latest offering, Duskwood, eliminates these safety nets by setting all its action in the smartphone world. The result is a game that’s unnatural, intriguing and partly thrilling. But there are nuances of its own, arising from the product hitting mobile gadgets.
Plot
Hannah goes missing, and for some inexplicable reason her last action was to send a message with the player’s phone number to her boyfriend. So the player ends up in a group chat room where his ‘boyfriend’ is added and where there are a few more of Hannah’s friends and her sister. They constitute a suspicious group.
A side chat with an anonymous hacker suggests that everyone is not what they seem. He grants access to Hannah’s cloud storage so that the player can begin to analyse the pieces of her disappearance and the roles her friends may have played in her abduction.
Gameplay
The most intriguing aspect is the gameplay. The action is purely through interactions that you can actually have on your phone. Group chats, video calls, swiping photos – the verisimilitude is striking. But it limits the action.
Duskwood is built almost entirely around text and how the player interacts with it. The group chat provides important information. After receiving certain prompts, one of several pre-written answers can be sent. The player chooses the answer they hope will provide more information.
The game has a challenging goal in mind. It wants to feel very real. However, it is a narrative in which the player has to follow certain directions. The answers in the form are rather unnatural. The language is either distractingly unnatural or hilarious, depending on the mood. Choosing the answer that gives the most information is a fascinating task. There is much to explore.
Features
Thomas’s boyfriend Hannah has a playlist to browse, as well as photos from Hannah’s cloud and various social media tie-ins from each character. There are plenty of realistic touches that add to the atmosphere. It’s not a particularly active game. There’s no combat. But finding clues and working to solve the mystery of Hannah’s disappearance is a pleasure.
The armchair detectives won’t mind the verbose play, but they can complain about the limitations of their interjections and questions. Duskwood aims to create an authentic, compelling mystery and generally manages to do so. The real-life aspect of the game works and is its strongest point. What’s more, the incredible detail of the world more than makes up for the clunky language and limited playability.