Dark Burial

Genre: Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Dark Theme Bundle, along with Breathing Fear, Don’t Be Afraid, Diabolic, and Swordbreaker)

Dark Burial, released on PC in 2019 and Nintendo Switch in 2020, is a challenging Platformer that has players as a wary soldier traveling through a dark and haunted series of levels to light signal fires, with only your trusty crossbow to assist you.

Dark Burial’s presentation makes use of pixel art visuals that aren’t all that impressive in any way, but are nevertheless decent at conveying what everything represents, despite the characters’ small size, and the detail in the backgrounds here is pretty good, even if the environments can get repetitive. This is backed by a dour soundtrack that works well enough for the dark theme of the game, but doesn’t feel like it really enhances the experience.

As for the gameplay, Dark Burial does make an attempt at being clever by using the crossbow as an element in its platforming puzzles, having players use it both to fend off enemies as well as to create platforms they can stand on. Unfortunately, this is somewhat limited, and the variety of puzzles you’ll encounter doesn’t seem very great or all that clever.

Another problem is your character’s robotic movements don’t make the Platforming here very fun, and the need for precision aiming at enemies to hit them doesn’t make the combat very fun. In addition, the game is extremely unforgiving – suffer a single hit and you’re tossed back to the beginning of the level. Get hit 15 times and you need to restart the game.

If Dark Burial has one saving grace, it’s the game’s $4 price tag, which makes it a bit easier to take a chance on it. However, even a bargain price can’t change the fact that this just isn’t a very fun game, and what little promise its ideas have don’t ultimately amount to much. You have plenty of better options on the Nintendo Switch.

tl;dr – Dark Burial is a challenging Platformer that has players fending off enemies and navigating tricky environments using a crossbow. Unfortunately, neither platforming nor combat in this game is especially fun, and even with its low $4 price tag, it’s hard to see much reason for players to bother with this game over countless better options on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: C-

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