Not: Bu inceleme yapılan ilk Türk incelemedir.
Benim için oyunun değindiği tema ve vaadettikleri gerçekten hoş ve ilgi çekiciydi. Oyunu gerçekten büyük umutlarla çıktıktan bir gün bile geçmeden satın aldım. Şunu söylemem gerek ki almasam da olurmuş. Oyunun teması gerçekten iyi. Oraya laf edemem ancak hikayenin işlenişini beğenmedim. Oyunda 3 kere ölme/yakalanma hakkınız var ve bunlar bitince oyuna baştan başlama durumundasınız. Her baştan başladığınızda temanın değindiği Hristiyan halkının liderlerinin davranışları değişebilir. Aslında bu iyi gibi gözükse de pek etkisini göremedim. Çünkü sonuç aynı oluyor. Amacımız yeğenimizi bir Hristiyan tarikatından çekip almak olan oyunda bir yere gitmekle ilgili görevler alıyoruz ama bunu yapmak o kadar da zevk vermiyor. Kontroller ise berbat. Karakteriniz düz giderken birden sağa sapabiliyor. Kısacası teması ve vaadettiklerini yerine getirememiş, yaklaşık 3 yıldır geliştirilmekte olan bu oyun olmamış. Paranız cebinizde kalsın. Almanıza gerek yok. Zira ben de iade ettim.
ARTI
+ Teması ilgi çekici
+ Her yeniden başladığınızda karakterlerin kişiliklerinin değişmesi
EKSİ
- Kontroller berbat
- Oynanışı ilgi çekmiyor
- Tema güzel de olsa oyunda ilerledikçe sıkılıyorsunuz.
- Karakterlerin arkasındaki hikaye merak uyandırmıyor.
NOT
51/100

Kuş bakışı kamera açısıyla oynayabileceğiniz bu oyunda; yeğeninizi bir topluluktan kurtarmak için çeşitli mücadelelerde bulunduğunuzu görebilirsiniz. Bu kurtarma aşamasını da öyle elinizi kolunuzu sallayarak gerçekleştiremiyorsunuz. Bulunduğunuz sahayı iyi bir şekilde kullanıp, gizliliğe de dikkat ederek temkinli bir şekilde ilerlemeye çalışabilirsiniz. Bu keşif dolu aşamalarda ise etraftaki yerlerde işinize yarayabilecek nesneleri bulabileceğiniz için, bu nesneleri gözden kaçırmamak için de ayrıca dikkatli davranabilirsiniz.

I had the highest hopes for this game; but now I see it is just an unpolished stealth game. Unpolished because the pc is very hard to control, walks out of rooms, although you didn't intend to do anything, takes forever to enter a building, often he falls down at the side of the stairs - yes, really awful controls! - etc. and the gameplay is about searching clues and hiding, if you want to bring it to the point. Not very interesting at all.

What annoys me very much: there is no deeper logic in why you find the objects where you find them. This game is a story game, not a dungeon crawler. For example: Why the hell do you find important bullets, medpacks etc. even in buildings before the camp? Why would the cult leave something like that there? in the few minutes I played I found so many incoherent elements, it killed my fun immediately. You enter a very secluded community, but most of the time you just can run around enemies, when they notice you, they follow you a few seconds and that's pretty much it. Then: How could a line of trees be a border, you can't go through? Yes they could have slowed you down and you would perhaps made suspicious sounds etc. Why can't you climb over wood with the height of approximately half an meter?

(So, what would I have expected? For example: Clear interactions between the npcs, as they spot you; after all, if you think about it for a little while, it doesn't make sense in any way, that you as an outsider could be able to run and crawl around the heart of a dangerous sect. What would have made sense is that you were accepted as a newbie and the stealth actions circle around the buildiings and locations that aren't open to newbies. There you could have sneaked in, risiking to be punished, or earn their trust through actions.)

The clips I saw some time ago pictured a whole different experience: It looked as there would be an innovative kind of gameplay, more adventure elements, where you could choose between many, many different solutions. But here you run around in pretty similiar looking environments, you can take out enemies or not (it doesn't seem to matter that you killed 5 or more people, not hiding the corpses: no matter what. you are put in a cage, you can break open, with only one guard and this outside the village?); you find something that helps you a little bit, but on the way I already lost interest in why I was there at all and so I request a refund.

What a wasted potencial! So much could have been - and so little was done.

Saw this game at a couple of cons and really liked the setting and concept. Found it strange that the developers were avoiding discussing the obvious inspiration of Jonestown, but whatever. Unfortunately I can't identify any big difference from those early builds in the finished product. It's not nearly as polished as I expected. The modest art style doesn't bother me, as the game was made by a small team on a tight budget. However, the game play really lets down what should be a much more interesting and immersive game.

The cultists have very limited AI - if they touch you with their "cone of sight" they automatically follow and attack you. As far as I've seen that's all there is to them; no subtlety or personality.

Very limited save games - you can only restart them ONCE! Since the game is difficult right off the bat (no matter what difficulty you set it at), the save system is unacceptable.

Shoddy as a stealth game and unresponsive as a shooter. Equipping a gun is nearly impossible between the time hostiles start attacking and the time they kill you. Aiming feels weird and difficult. Rocks thrown as distractions fall between yourself and hostiles, causing them to walk closer to you.

I could go on, but you get the idea. Hopefully the developers take criticism to heart and work to fix these and other flaws. For the time being I can't recommend this game. SUPER disappointed, as I really wanted to like it! Got a refund after only a couple hours, but would be open to checking it out again later if they improve it.

I've actually been following the development of The Church in the Darkness for a few years now, so I was glad to see it release and snapped up a copy quickly. You can pretty much look at the product page and have a decent grasp for what this game is about, but I'll go into my experience a bit regardless.


You play as Vic, an ex law enforcement agent asked by his sister to sneak into the compound of a cult called Collective Justice Mission, led by Isaac and Rebecca Walker, to check on your nephew Alex who has joined and been living with the cult without outside contact for two years. This is about as far as the story gets without deviating based on a set of different preacher personalities that can have Isaac and/or Rebecca genuinely trying to provide a peaceful life for the cult members to wanting to watch the whole world burn.

Each run will feature some combination of personalities. Sometimes they are both good, sometimes they are both evil, and at other times one will be good while the other is evil. Additionally, your own actions will likewise impact the story. There are nineteen distinct endings, so there is a lot to explore.


The gameplay is mostly isometric stealth. Cultists all have a sight radius and as long as you stay out of that, you will be good, but that is easier said and done given as how you have to pass near many in order to complete your various goals. To that end, you are able to find and use townspeople and guard disguises which restrict enemy sight radius. If you are caught, normal workers will seek out guards, and guards will pursue you and try to capture you (the first time). After you are captured and manage to reclaim your gear though, all bets are off. Should the guards find you, they will beat or shoot you to death if at all possible.

Fortunately you can hide in furniture or simply hoof it far enough away from the enemies to where they give up. As you progress through endings though, guards will start to become more tenacious. Speaking of hiding things, you can knock out or kill people and hide their bodies in furniture as well. One amusing aspect of the game is you can hide while your pursuer is looking right at you lol. No biggie.

Combat is basically twin stick shooter or basher depending on your weapons, of which there is a decent selection of lethal and non lethal to go along with a variety of helpful items used as distractions or utility devices. Should you be spotted, residents will try to sound a camp wide alarm, although you can disable these if you have the right items.

Basically that is the game, although there is also a lot of looting which involves finding aforementioned weapons and devices, food for healing, and various notes, pictures and so on which fill out the game's lore and also serve to drive the plot forward.

There are a few helpful NPC's, including Alex, that you will unlock as you unlock endings, and these NPC's will help you in some way if you help them as well. Generally, helping them means finding some sort of evidence or a personal item important to them.

This is a game where each run is intended to last somewhere in the hour to two hour range depending on what you decide to do before escaping the camp. Once you learn the mechanics of the game, you can cut that time in half easily. The map layout never really changes although NPC locations always do between runs.


The graphics in this one are intentionally grim and almost faded looking. This is a community being developed in the middle of a jungle, so vibrant graphics would seem a bit paradoxical in this case. All in all, while the graphics aren't stunning by any means, they do serve their intended purpose, which is furthering the idea that you are in the middle of a cultist camp in the middle of the jungle. This is further bolstered by some fairly evocative images of a mass grave, people stoning another member, and so on.


The audio tracks for this game is really the highlight. For one, Isaac and Rebecca both broadcast via a loudspeaker system throughout the game, espousing their beliefs, sometimes arguing, and generally letting you know exactly which type of preachers you are getting with each run. This might be the single most important aspect of the game since their personalities and your response to them directly ties into which ending you will get in each run.

Beyond that, the dialogue in general is convincing and the voice actors were largely on top of their games. I thought Alex was as bit annoying, but outside of that, it was by and large perfect.

The ambient sounds and sounds of activity in the camp really do serve to even fill out the atmosphere of the game more.


For me, The Church in the Darkness has been a lot of fun, although after around twelve runs, it starts lacking variety. So, while your mileage may vary, this game is in my opinion well worth playing and well worth the asking price. It's not the greatest game I've ever played, but it is one of more unique experiences I've had and there is no lack for social commentary throughout that I also found quite interesting. Recommended

The narrative elements seem interesting, but this game is mechanically very weak. I would be curious to know more about the characters, underlying plot, different endings/stories, but the foundation for delivering any of the potentially high quality narrative content is just not here at all for me. Very bare-bones world building, poor UI, not immersive at all. The 'background chatter' sound effects are completely immersion breaking for me. Quality narrative in games really requires a believable, immersive world IMO. This game doesn't have that, and it certainly isn't mechanically fun or interesting.

TLDR - I was really excited about this game, purchased day 1, but very disappointed after playing.

Oh man I really tried to like this game. I've read up on Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple a lot and I find cults and their dynamics fascinating, if also quite terrifying. The premise, therefore, obviously appeals to me a lot. The gameplay is just absolutely appalling though, its beyond redeemable. It's simply not enjoyable in the slightest. The biggest issue is the developers decision to make this an entirely stealth based game and then employ the most basic and lazy stealth mechanics ever.

The decision to make you an covert infiltrator instead of a rogue member is the downfall of this game. If they had based the game around joining the cult as a member and having to follow a schedule while investigating the cult and its leaders while also trying to find your nephew it could've been a truly amazing and unique game. Even the lacklustre stealth mechanics wouldn't be so bad if they were only used sparingly and in specific off limits locations. This would also make getting caught, caged, and released make a lot more sense since the cult would have a reason to give you a second chance after punishing you. It would also make talking to people less illogical, I.E you won't be running away and hiding from LITERALLY everyone bar these few specific randomly talkative people. Why the hell would I walk over to a dude thats armed and firing at targets after being chased and attacked by every other armed person?

The guards have a very basic cone of vision (viewable ingame from a button press depending on difficulty) and anything outside of that is just invisible. You can just murder a dude right next to his friend and provided you run away with the body before he turns around he wont notice a damn thing. Even if you walk right up to the person carrying their lifeless buddy like a sack of trash. The game is just so ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ easy because of this that the developers had to implement one of the most cheap and sadistic save systems in gaming history. There is also very rudimentary outfit system but all that does is reduce the vision cone size. Lazy.

That is the majority of the gameplay, the rest of the game is just running around dodging aforementioned vision cones, finding notes and exploring. I have honestly played flash games with better stealth gameplay.

Now all this is pretty bad right? A stealth game with terrible stealth, what's to like? Well it does have some redeeming aspects. The writing is excellent and anyone familiar with the events of jonestown will see many stark similarities that are (IMO) recreated respectfully and mostly accurately to the real life tragedy. Some of the notes and postcards are almost carbon copies of things found amongst the dead in jonestown. The voice acting is phenomenal and the system of having changing leader personalities is really unique and interesting.

I couldn't enjoy any of that though! I tried, oh how I ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ tried. It's just so boring and somehow manages to be both far too easy and excessively frustrating at the same time. I'm really quite disappointed and I really hate to give this a negative. I know its a small team and they most likely didn't have a huge budget. Still, I've seen cheaper games with more effort put into mechanics.

I think there's some really creative and talented people on this team, I hope I see more from them in the future but I cannot recommend this game. Not without a complete overhaul of the gameplay mechanics. I don't see them putting much more money into this though.

This game promised more than it delivers. It claims your choices make a significant difference between runs and how no 2 runs will be the same. My first run started great and ended quickly. You're asked to "rescue" your nephew and you sneak into the cult site as a one-man infiltration team. You hear heartfelt messages broadcast around the camp about how capitalism sucks, we need our guns, and how the American dream is a scam to make the rich richer (very topical nowadays, points awarded there) and how "we're all in this together" with messages about racism, economic suffering, cults as a whole, the us vs them mentality, and how people can get wrapped in and can't get out. And then it was all downhill from there.

I wanted a pacifist run on a harder difficulty as I enjoy a good stealth game. I learned the cultists wake up very quickly if you don't box them and without a disguise there was no real hiding. I learned that without getting lucky enough to find a map or a friendly npc early, you'd be flailing about painfully until you did. I learned that getting caught once can ruin your run even though the game lets you get caught a couple times based on how far you've progressed. And I learned that a higher difficulty was a waste of time as it only made getting anything done more annoying than difficult.

2 hours in and a handful of achievements later, the game wasn't fun. It feels like it designed to not be fun. The multiple personalities (which are randomized) make little difference and the endings are variations of a couple lines of texts stating the aftermath of what happened. That's it. Nothing actually changes the game itself. Nothing changes how you interact with npcs. Nothing you do means anything. It doesn't feel like a game and it hurts the messages the game tries to convey.

After playing a couple runs, I went looking online to see if I was missing something. One of the review I read (by Max Moeller on TechRaptor https://techraptor.net/gaming/reviews/church-in-darkness-review-darkness-is-no-fun) stated how they were ranting to girlfriend about how disappointing the game was compared to what it could have been. The girlfriend's response was "this sounds like something that would be better as a movie". Like Max, I wholeheartedly agree.

This was a poor excuse for a video game and the lack of material makes it seem like a messy patch job thrown together for a quick buck that used an important message as a sales point (which is rather hypocritical as the game itself shames the very concept in the cult broadcasts).

This is a surprisingly tricky one for me to review. I've followed its development from early on and only now remembered to give the game a shot. Having complete one run and played several more I find myself extremely conflicted. This is absolutely a competent game and I don't regret playing it, but the question is whether I recommend it and I don't know.

At it's core, Church in the Darkness is an barebones stealth game. You need to sneak in, search cabins to find information to fill in your map and identify your objectives, and complete before fleeing the scene. You can sneak, KO, stealth kill or shoot the guards and stash their bodies in random foot lockers.

I'd say this core, works fine and at least fulfills the store page marketing. But what about the procedural aspects and dynamic story.

The map is mixed around, the personalities of your rescue target and two preachers are randomized. You can find purely random items within the cabins, but there's only a handful in the game total. The cult itself is always the same socialist "utopia" with the same propaganda scattered around. I wasn't asking for a well-thought out cult generator... but this was disappointing and ultimately I stopped reading the documents.

It's also worth noting that the guards are the same regardless of the temperament of the preachers. Even with both peace and love preachers, they have orders to shoot on sight and not even a bit of hesitation. Bodies scattered around in the woods, people being stoned or trapped in cages, etc. It's lore-d by stating that they are afraid you're there to kill them, but the world just feels the same between playthrough's and that's disappointing.

The procedural aspects also lead to other problems with the experience. Good stealth requires interesting pathing that leaves openings or patrol patterns that are interesting to navigate. Church in the Darkness tends to just spam the map with armed guards and fill each chokepoint with 3-5 more. This lead to certain situations that just weren't enjoyable depending on the RNG. (One map spawned me in with one path, and a stationary guard standing on it)

In truth, I keep wishing that the game was less ambitious and created a short, but linear hand-designed game. It's absolutely not BAD as is... but it falls short of what feels like it could have been.

And then it brings me back to the question of whether I recommend it. If the concept interests you, its well worth the deep discount sale for a single play. But ultimately, I don't myself actively recommending it to anyone and this makes me so darn sad.

It is not bad. It is just not very interesting to play. At its best, it is average.
There are multiple ways to end it so, a lot of replayability but in the same time, it becomes quickly repetitive.
It comes with a good idea in an interesting environment but it lacks of development.
On an extremely good sales you can give it a try and finish it once in a couple of hours. At full price, it is definitely a no go.