[If you would rather watch or listen to this review, you can wait for the video sometime this week after all my audio is recorded. I will be posting my Half Moon and Full Moon playthrough in order to highlight how much one difficulty setting can change the experience. Off-camera, I also played the easiest and hardest modes.]
In what is another chapter in games that are probably bad for the sake of my own sanity, today we’re going to be briefly visiting the streets of Gloomwood, a Victorian-esque steampunk survival horror game published by the mad lads over at New Blood Interactive. These are the same plebs who have released titles such as DUSK and Amid Evil; more specifically, the creative director is David Szymanski and the developer is Dillon Rogers, someone who has also helped with other New Blood games. So what you should take away here is that everyone involved has very high standards if these people’s memes are a barometer of the quality of their games.
All jokes aside, the demo for Gloomwood is something I’m glad I went into with zero expectations save for knowing those involved because I came away more than eager to return. If you have any other experience with New Blood Interactive games, then I would highly recommend you give the demo a try for yourself before reading any further. Or you can watch my own blind playthroughs on the Half and Full Moon difficulty options if that’s too much work. However, if you need even more incentives, then you can imagine this game as the cosmic lovechild of the classic Thief series destined to be with the cult-classic Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth—or you can think of it as a first-person immersive sim experience reminiscent of Bloodborne, you damn Gen Z-ers. With those fair warnings out of the way, let’s actually talk about the game in greater detail without any veiled hyperboles.
Gloomwood is an interesting case for the immersive sim genre due to how its difficulty system works. Instead of adjusting the overall challenge by stats, these options determine far more what kind of experience you want to play. Perhaps the best way to describe this game is how most people view survival horror games as a balance between action and horror, and those two extremes are the most accurate descriptions for the easiest and the hardest settings. Besides the slight damage buffs to you and your enemies, these options influence how much ammo, health and food you can find on the map as well as providing you additional tools such as the portable music box on the easiest mode or enemy vision cones on all but the hardest mode. There could be slight adjustments to the enemy’s AI as their numbers increase, but that’s difficult to tell based on only one level—and the same issue applies to the gold system that I assume will be used for purchasing extra ammo or health supplies.
Regardless of your choice, you won’t find yourself in another pure action game from this studio as Gloomwood has several mechanics to encourage a more methodical play-style. For starters, the game has a light-gem and sound system reminiscent of the Thief series, which the latter system can be influenced by the surface you traverse, and you can scale over walls to quietly get around a threat. Holstering your weapon is also vital for stealth because it will greatly increase your movement speed, but you leave yourself momentarily defenseless. Additionally, checking your backpack will not pause the game, so healing items are best used outside of combat. If you want to quickly check how much ammunition you have, you can open the revolver cylinder or the shotgun’s magazine, so you will always be aware how much ammunition and reserves you have left. There are other features you would expect from immersive sims such as picking up objects to create platforms or distractions, but there are other neat little touches such as listening through doors for enemies and picking up items through barred gates to circumvent conflict. A decision you will have to ask yourself as you play because the game relies exclusively on the player to set their own rules.
Now, obviously, I am only judging this game based off one level, so it’s far too early to decide if the current challenge is indicative of the final experience. To be honest, this issue isn’t exclusive to Gloomwood as all immersive sims become way too easy once you’ve learned the levels’ layout. However, this game could add modifiers to provide more player-driven challenges and to set up your own punishments.
If you have played the Thief (2014) reboot, then you’re likely familiar with the extensive options to customize the game to your own interests. These include disabling gameplay mechanics, turning off combat completely or making it more difficult to take-down foes, and providing your typical elite challenges to flex your gamer skills. Most of these ideas could be added to Gloomwood without any alterations, and, depending on wherever this game goes, it could provide a purity test for future mechanics or levels. The real benefit, besides providing more content for the player with simple modifiers, is that it builds on the ideas already present that adapts the challenge to your interests. Even a few meaningless achievements would be enough for most players to replay this game several times, so you could provide even more tangible value at no cost to the game’s final quality.
You could argue whether the game needs to tie my own hands when these challenges are all things players can do for themselves, but when the developers provide these options it gives players (like myself) the assurance that they’re doable. It’s not the best kind of argument as these meta-game challenges from other games rely on your own willpower to do them, but it’s simply basic human psychology to have some certainty of an outcome before you go the extra mile. Plus, as an even more personal reason, I would be excited to replay Gloomwood with as many interesting modifiers as possible, so putting the idea out there now might yield creative challenges later.
By this point, you don’t need me to tell you to go play the demo as I already did that at the beginning, so all I can really say here is to wish-list it and wait for its Early Access launch if your interest is piqued. Until that faithful evening when the streets are barren once again with only the translucent blanket of the gibbous moon slowly becoming full once again, shining bright, red, and…
