Developer: Dirigo Games
Publisher: Digital Tribe Games
Platform: PC
Depths of Fear: Knossos – Review
Depths of Fear: Knossos is a rogue-like dungeon-crawler horror game with a Greek theme attached to it that delivers a stunning retro feeling brought to us by Dirigo Games, a one man indie game developer, inspired by Ray Harryhausen and numerous oldschool games.
Story
If you are intrigued by the Greek Mythology, the story of King Minos and the Minotaur should be known to you. After some unfortunate events, King Minos asked Daedalus to construct a gigantic labyrinth to house the Minotaur. Every nine years, King Minos would sent seven young boys and seven young girls as dinner into the pit but you are Theseus, heir to the throne of Athens and son of the mighty Poseidon, and you are tired that your friends are being fed to monsters. This is why you volunteer yourself to go into to pit and stop this madness once and for all.
Graphics
The graphics of the game is not something to write home about, the mazes are extremely dark which works well since you are trying to sneak around without attracting too much attention from the guardians and possible other creatures but certain textures seem off and out of place while others are simply too bright. The character and creature models don’t have a realistic feel to them either which tends to take away the scary effect of the game but considering it is a stealth based, horror game with that retro touch to it, it does has its charms. A nice graphical touch is the fact that once you are near dying, the graphics will turn to grey. There are some graphical glitches where the light or your character will clip through the walls and where tables seem to be randomly floating but these should not destroy your gameplay.
Sound
The sound has a general creepy feeling to it, if you can consider hearing the gusting winds around you being slightly creepy at least but other than that and the footsteps of the guardians, there is not much sound going on in the game as there is no voice acting and hitting creatures does not yield a well-desired sound effect. You will be able to tell if a boss has detected you however by the blaring sound of a goat amongst things and some catchy electrical dubstep.
Gameplay
While the game starts out quite normally where you get greeted by friendly NPCs in a bright gladiator arena-like surrounding, you will get to see the darkness soon enough as you get thrown in a pit. This is where the true storyline will slowly unfold itself by gathering books, other items and exploring the maze and its multiple rooms where the centaurs and other creatures hide in. Along the way, you will find clues to whether or not you are able to kill the monsters you will come across and how you may avoid them by using the darkness to your advantage for example.
At the very beginning, your arsenal will consist of a torch that you’ve picked up along the way. You will be able to buy weapons from the vendor once you have started gathering gold that is scattered around. Some of these weapons can be quite expensive but you could get lucky and find weapons in the dungeons. You may want to be careful where you aim your torch however as any wooden items you may hold in your other hand can go up in flames and cause some serious damage to your character.
Once you’ve fallen in the pit, you will find yourself at the epicenter of the game where you have access to the eight levels available, each with their own mythical creature: Satyr, Cerberus, Centaur, Manticore, Griffin, Medusa, Hydra and eventually the Minotaur himself. Each of these levels requires you to do a complete search of the maze where you can acquire gold, books and other items for your arsenal. Don’t fool yourself and think you have defeated the guardian in that level when the game shows you the level complete sign because there are more levels to come within that specific stage. You are able to kill the guardians but they will respawn as quickly as you have killed them so staying on your guard and avoiding them until you’ve reached the final lair, where you can finally destroy them, is a fairly good option. Every level is randomized every time you start a new game or if you die, this means that your memory is of no use.
Depths of Fear: Knossos is not for the faintest of hearts as they will have trouble willing themselves to advance through pitch black passage ways, especially with a guardian on your tail but once you have figured out there is nothing much to be afraid of, the gameplay starts to flow nicely.
Conclusion
Depths of Fear: Knossos is all about hiding and sneaking your way through the mazes, you can hack ‘n slash your way but you may find yourself unsuccessful until the very last stage of each room. Once the guardian has seen you, staying alive is a matter of whether or not you can find a big enough shadow to hide until the guardian will no longer chase you. Due to this, the game feels like it’s more based on luck rather than skill. The graphics is not something to be amazed about and there are some graphical errors to be found but the overall feel of the game makes it a lovely horror rogue-like dungeon-crawler with countless hours of gameplay thanks to the replayability.
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