Dark Days (Nintendo Switch) – The test

“Inspired by classic 1990s horror films like Twin Peaks and The X-Files, Dark Days is a full-fledged horror adventure game. From a spooky motel to a haunted desert, solve puzzles and move towards a disturbing truth. Dive into an American nightmare, immerse yourself in cinematic environments, but be careful and think carefully! Something is stalking you. There is only one rule: if you look at it, this nightmare kills.”

This first-person 3D adventure game is brought to us by the French studio Parallel Studio, which also developed EQQO or Under the Waves unfortunately not [encore] ported to Switch.

Previously released for Oculus GO on 06/22/2016, Dark Days was a point-and-click VR adventure game with a good touch of escape game for connoisseurs of the genre. And just like their previous title EQQO, it benefited from a good adaptation on Nintendo Switch in March 2023, 7 years later.

“One night for one person please!”

We play Jade Lacroix, a novelist in need of a break and leaving behind her girlfriend Tara, traveling a desert road towards Las Vegas, in Death Valley. It’s already promising! The car radio plays a news bulletin about the disappearance of a 23-year-old girl, Crystal, who was staying at the Motel 9 nearby.

After some exchange with Jade's thoughts and observing the elements in the vehicle, we hear a creepy moan close to our ear, and when we turn our head, a dark creature jumps at us.

Barely launched, the tone that this search, escape game and hide-and-seek game will take is given to us because this entity will stalk us both in our dreams and in reality! Finally, will everything we see be real? It’s up to us to find out!

After a first big scare which could have made us leave the road, Jade decides to find a place to stop and regain her senses, and above all to spend the night there. What's better than a slightly creepy motel like in American films? And as luck would have it, it’s at Motel 9 that we’ll stop for the night!

We will not reveal more about the rest because the title is worth reading. At the price of 7.99 euros oneShopthe playing time varies from 3 to 5 hours depending on our desire or not to unearth the 20 reels scattered throughout the 5 chapters of the game, which allow us to learn more about past events in this desert region.

“There they see me, there they see me more, they see me, they see me more, they see me a little, they see me the more they see me. »

Dark Days having been released in 2016 for the Oculus Go, a few elements remained in this adaptation for the Switch. An orange arrow will appear during certain movements (climbing on or off a piece of furniture for example) but the controls will still remain simple: right stick to move, left stick for view, left trigger to run, right trigger to zoom ( handy for viewing small items), A for interact, B for cancel, and Y for crouch.

The settings are quite beautiful even if the visual depth is absent. A good thing because it allows us to stay focused on what is close to the character.

The soundscape is perfect! The emptiness of the desert or the gloomy side of the motel are rather well transcribed, and Nicolas Bredin made a point of refining the synchronization of the distressing sequences with a well-made soundtrack (He also took care of the OST of EQQO). And the possibility of playing the title in French is really a big plus! The VF dubbing, with subtitles (or not) is very successful. This allows us to appreciate Jade's little random jokes about her environment or to experience her moods as if we were her. We imagine that rendering in VR a few years ago must have been extremely distressing!

In this point-and-click adventure, we will have to find clues, collectibles and reusable objects to escape from the different rooms where we constantly find ourselves locked in. Like an escape game, a code or a key will be found in the environment but the creature will be present to put obstacles in our way!

You will therefore have to avoid its gaze and hide in a cupboard or under a table to make it disappear. If you get caught, it's game over guaranteed! And so we start again at the last automatically saved sequence. There, we see that the objects to be recovered are arranged in a procedural way: the key found at the bottom of a drawer will therefore be elsewhere. It's pretty cool even if there aren't 30,000 places to stash this stuff either.

The animations are correct, the few characters encountered are as cliché as the apple in the apple pie!

The jump scare and hide and seek sequences are not too numerous to be able to appreciate them and allow us to continue our little investigation.

The storyline is also rather good, even if for those accustomed to the genre we will quickly understand the outcome before reaching chapter 5! And as a bonus, two possible endings just to spice up the finale of this distressing and mysterious title a little.

Cultural reading:
Do you know when the first Jump scare was made?
In the cinematic universe, the first film to use this effect would be The Phantom of the Opera from 1925 by Rupert Julian based on the eponymous novel by Gaston Leroux. Black and white and silent film, it gives a certain style, right?

But for the avid movie buff, the most famous jump scare would come from Cat People from 1942, so around twenty years later, then Psycho by Alfred Hitchcock in 1960 or even The Exorcist by William Friedkin in 1973.

Many have tried it, many have failed because jump scare is a whole technique, a whole art: neither too much nor too little, playing with the environment, the scenario, the music, etc…

In video games, it is difficult to know when this phenomenon dates from. We just know that it mainly belongs to the genre of horror, thriller and psychological. Some people will form their own opinion based on the many top 5 or 10 jump scares that are lying around on the internet.

Ultimately, we can only offer you a small, non-exhaustive list of characters or titles causing good jump scares that are reminiscent of [mauvais] memories for certain players: Alma from FEAR, the animatronics from Five nights at Freddy's, the Slenderman, the appearances from Layers of Fear, the dogs from RE, the monsters from Amnesia, Outlast quite simply and many others.