Wilderdark drops you into the middle of an infected, dinosaur infested jungle, in search of the cure for the infection. However, to find that cure you’ll need to have your wits about you as the infection has twisted and contorted both the environment and its inhabitants into a much more vicious set of flora and fauna.
The demo for WIlderdark, which I played at the recent Comic Con, was actually quite long and had you explore from your plane’s crash site into the deeper parts of the jungle is your mission to try and find the remnants of the science team that came before you.
Utilising the very few tools at your disposal, such as a camera with flash and equipment to scan the various things around you, you begin to navigate deeper and get through some very light-sensitive vines with your camera flash. The premise seems simple, sneak about, research, upgrade, rinse and repeat although in the back of my mind this reminds me of Turok Evolution with the twisted dinosaurs patrolling the forest floor and the little raptors running around.
After eventually finding the pre-established camp you are introduced to some of the crafting and researching mechanics where you can make new equipment and send both samples and data back to what I can only assume is an off-island base somewhere. After a more in-depth look around it’s clear the rest of the researchers have succumbed to whatever is happening here as you can find corpses upstairs that seem to naturally generate cloth fibres and look genuinely horrific both literally and as a concept as some sort of flesh/cloth golem thing.
Wilderdark has a clear emphasis on surviving over being some sort of gun-toting destroyer of the mutated dinosaurs, and has a lot of mechanics to keep you hidden and quiet – which I admittedly didn’t seem to be very good at. But, it does kind of force you into adapting to what was happening around you.
After a chat with some of the devs on the floor they mentioned that there are some interesting mechanics in play for when you die. I perished twice and it just reset me a little bit and I got back up, apparently after a third death you actually die and with each death you become more and more infected, which the world reacts to. Some animals will be less likely to spot you, vines will be less likely to impede you but man-made systems will flag you as non-human… so, death is quite literally its own unique mechanic.
I prefer a more action-based adventure but the slow burn stealthy approach to this horrific research trip certainly has some interesting aspects in play to keep even the more action-oriented focused on surviving.
Wilderdark will be available for PC today, and currently has a demo available on Steam.
