Darkest Dreams Remake

Darkest Dreams the remake is a short horror game that is less than an hour (took me 40-45 minutes to beat). It's a game about nightmares and a mysterious cursed book, (that is not the DeathNote, I assure you!), but I won't tell you a lot about the plot!
We play as Frey, a normal guy (despite maybe the fact of wearing the "fantasy hero clothes" unlike other characters that wear a more fitting and modern attire) that wakes up at night in the big mansion he recently bought.
The place is clearly cursed since he hears screaming and this is only the beginning of a real nightmare!

Anyway don't worry all the gore and blood is just on charsets pixelated level, but the game does a great job using music and sounds to build a tense atmosphere of dread. But how's the gameplay?
Well you can expect a classic "survival horror/adventure game" with chase scenes and puzzles. The game is divided into five different short acts but these can be summarized into three chapters, that become more and more shorter: the cursed mansion, the dark dream and return to the mansion. Total lenght is an hour, as I already wrote before.


L. is a world-renowned detective who takes on the challenge of catching the mass murderer known as Kira. Or not?

I admit that the various tasks have different difficulties, some are really easy (the riddles) and others are quite difficult (like the invisible maze chase scene). There is also a part in which you have to answer exactly to a question, but not much time before that part you are somewhat invited to look at something that is the answer (but you won't realize that until the right time). Easy!
But there are some parts in which you have to fail to progress, or you have to interact with some items in the mansion that were not present before, and that took me some time to figure out (there are some hints of course).

The game makes use of Rtp but I noticed the use of some custom/additional resources (there is a good quantity of different monsters/creatures despite being a short game with no combat!) but these are not many, in any case the game looks of. Mapping is also pretty ok, nothing that really stands out of particularly worthy of note (especially the darkest dream part that looks like your typical bland average dungeon), but also not bad, it's well done and made without errors. Ok there are just a couple of odd things like the spectre of the fireplace that is always present and will kill you if you spend too much time in the room, but for the most part there aren't issues, and there are also descriptions/interactions with almost every object.

What else? Oh yes, the game is available in spanish or english, you can save anywhere and anytime, and it's suggested to do that often since you can be killed with just one touch, and I am also positive that you cannot be stuck anywhere (at least it did not happened to me). There are also two endings, the true ending (I guess) and the bad ending (easier to get, anyway it's not really an ending, I mean just a sort of different game over screen in which you don't really die... play the game and see! Now, the verdict awaits!).


Oh yes! SOON! (wait, is this NEAR another Death Note reference?)

Wake up!
Ok, I never played the original but I somewhat enjoyed this one. It has some flaws and it is not a perfect game but there are also some nice aspect and I found it enjoyable despite the variable difficulty of the tasks/puzzles. For example the zombies in the final part (but also the ones in the dream sequence, and the spider) can kill you in just one second and this was a bit frustrating because avoiding them it was more a matter of luck than skill! There are also some options that will trigger instant game over, but in any case it's still doable without too much effort or tries, I guess.
Oh yeah, I completed the game, it's just a bit less than an hour and the story has some interesting twists even if not everything is explained or makes sense, but here it is a matter of personal taste, in any case it's a nice short horror entry, it seems inspired to D̶e̶a̶t̶h̶N̶o̶t̶e̶ the movie 1408 (or Room 1408).

Darkest Dreams is a nice short game that for some aspects it is far better than your average survival horror adventure game but lacks of some element that could make it really stand out (I mean for example the torch mechanic is useful but has no real use besides... lightning some dark areas!) and has some minor flaws (the large empty areas, the unbalanced difficulty of some tasks). It gets a 3.5/5, not bad!