Cults are fascinating. As a general rule, we’re all entranced by people being swept up into the quasi-religious fervor of a cult. Jonestown. Heaven’s Gate. The Branch Davidians. These ideas evoke a certain unavoidable imagery that we’ve darkly romanticized in cinema and literature for decades. We call all sorts of things cults to show that they’re deviant belief systems. It’s a word that is synonymous with extremism, death, and obsession. Taking this into consideration, the premise for The Church in the Darkness is fascinating. It’s the late 1970s and you’re Vic, a former police officer with some special forces skills asked to rescue your nephew Alex from the clutches of a cult which fled the United States for the South American jungle to practice their ‘peaceful’ religion unopposed. Alex has somehow managed to throw in with them and it’s your job to track him down, infiltrate the cult’s headquarters, and return him to his parents in the US.
Sounds compelling, doesn’t it? And that’s pretty much it. There are some fascinating fictional stories about cults. The Following for example, started out as an utter powerhouse. It fizzled later, of course, but the first season is simply gripping. The Church in the Darkness, on the other hand, is not. It’s flat, uninteresting, and lacks a solid narrative. You’re given a metered story in small snippets of letters, notes, and dialogue presentations. It’s more of an outline than anything else, with a non-stop barrage of semi-religious propaganda in the background over Freedom Town’s ridiculously expansive PA system. Seriously, for the amount of jungle it covers, the speakers, wire, and alarm systems would have cost as much as the entire encampment, even in the 1970s. And there’s no depth here, just pervasive verbal and visual reminders that this is a generic manipulative cult. A few pentagrams and bloodstains here, a worship area there, a firing range here, a smattering of church buildings over there. No serious backstory to the cult, no complex brainwashing devices, and nothing that really drives home the power that a charismatic leader can have over a group of impressionable people.
The Church in the Darkness is described as an Action/Infiltration game, which sounds like it’s on a level with Metal Gear Solid. Nothing could be further from the truth, however. In terms of game mechanics, it’s hard to be more of a dud than CitD. The controls are awful, with it being difficult to not only aim your weapons, but also to even walk into some buildings or around bushes. The AI is a complete joke and I spent a fair amount of time simply running right through the firing paths of multiple enemies only to have them stop chasing me after a few hundred feet when I magically disappeared from their view and memory as soon as I stepped behind a building. As for stealth? You can literally run up behind an enemy, have them start to notice you, and then grab them and kill of incapacitate them. It’s such a broken system that I just started shooting people and leaving them in plain view everywhere I went by the second playthrough. By the fourth, I simply didn’t care and I was just experimenting randomly to see if I could get different endings, none of which were particularly satisfying, even when I did manage to save my nephew. There are at least 19 different endings, each one adding a bit of context, a few characters or items. Sure, each playthrough is different, with cult leader personalities shifting from virtually evil to welcoming depending on a toss of the dice, but it’s still just not all that interesting. Save Alex, join up, run away, kill everyone, after a while I just didn’t care. And each playthrough is short, only taking about 30-45 minutes if you know what you’re doing, so you’re definitely not going to get a lot of mileage out of this one.
Graphically, The Church in the Darkness takes underwhelming to an art form. It actually looks better in undocked mode on the Switch, mostly because the screen is smaller and forces the scaling to match your character better. On a full size 55″ TV, your character feels absolutely minuscule. There’s very little detail either way and you’re zoomed so far out that you essentially can’t see your character or anything else in any real amount of detail. You could remake this game for the Atari 2600 and it wouldn’t make much of a difference. It’s just ugly and uses perspective poorly. When you actually manage to find someone to converse with and the camera finally zooms in, you get to see a character bio picture and the game in it’s full three dimensional glory, virtually completely lacking in textures. That probably doesn’t matter, since you can’t zoom in for the actual gameplay and when you wouldn’t be able to see them anyway, why have textures at all, right? Don’t put too much heed into the promo shots for the game either, as they’re significantly more exciting than the actual game.
Richard Rouse III is responsible for this disappointment of a game. You likely don’t know him from games such as The Suffering for original Xbox and PS2 or the 3D remake of Centipede for PC in the late 90s. He also apparently wrote a book on game design, which is weird since he must not know much about it, judging from The Church in the Darkness. Make no mistake, it’s an excellent concept. High concept games are something we need to see more of and it would be wrong to discourage them, especially in an independent release setting. Titles such as Masquerada: Songs and Shadows are the type of fleshed-out worlds that can compel a gamer even with limited gameplay. But The Church in the Darkness fails to tell it’s story. It’s a hollow shell of a concept, waiting to be filled by a studio more skilled than Paranoid Productions. Can a game be about 1970s cults and be compelling, interesting, and more than a little frightening? Of course it can, especially when it’s not over 3 years late and still feels rushed. Unfortunately, The Church in the Darkness is not that game. Unless you’re desperate for a game about cults, skip this one, especially at $20.
This review was based on a digital copy of The Church in the Darkness provided by the publisher. It was played on a Nintendo Switch in both docked and undocked modes. The Church in the Darkness is also available for PS4, Xbox One, and PC. All screenshots are taken directly from gameplay and still make it look slightly more interesting than the game actually is.