Darkness Arrives

Darkness Arrives is a side-scrolling action game with a grim comic-book look, and by our assessment, that mood is the main thing it sells. The appeal is in simple run-and-fight play and the steady stream of enemies rather than in systems or story. Its limit is plain: if a game needs more than basic combat and a dark wrapper, there is not much else here to lean on. In practice it feels like a lean indie action piece, with repetition doing a lot of the work. Compared with bigger platformers or more elaborate hack-and-slash games, it sits much closer to the stripped-down end of the genre. The name fits the tone, and the game asks for little beyond patience with its loop.