DreadOut: Keepers of the Dark originally was meant as a DLC for the original DreadOut game, but eventually surfaced as a standalone title.

Unfortunately, Keepers of the Dark does not have much to offer in its own right - you start in a mirror world of sorts that acts as a travel hub. From there, you can delve into eight different worlds, most of which will seem eerily similiar - not to the least because the better part of the terrain is copied from previous DreadOut levels!

The new ghosts presented in Keepers of the Dark are interesting in their own right - there's anything from haunted dolls to spectral horsemen (or horsewomen, rather) to insane canibals. Sadly, the piecemeal type of presentation which KotD uses means that each of these ghosts only has a minimal story behind it, and what little information the entries of the "Ghostpedia" offer usually are presented in semi-broken English.

In truth, I think KotD makes one fatal mistake: Horror games, in general, rely on their atmosphere. You never know what's going to hit you, when it's going to hit you, and if it's going to hit you at all. Sadly, KotD does hardly build up any atmosphere at all - if you've played the original game, you already know most of the levels, and the new ghosts introduced in this spinoff only are scary until you understand the basic tactic needed to banish them. To be entirely honest, the ghosthunt gets tedious rather quickly, not to the least because you know that you need to banish a certain number of ghosts per level.

Coupled with the rather short playtime (aprox. 3-5 hours), DreadOut: Keepers of the Dark may perhaps be worth its relatively low price, but not necessarily your time - there are many better horror games to spend your time with.

I really wanted to like this one. The first DreadOut isn't a masterpiece by any means, but it's a lo-fi game with lots of souls to it, and I truly enjoyed it, enough to 100%.
Sure enough, I wasted no time in getting KotD and... well, it doesn't measure up to a bar that was kinda low to begin with.

KotD is pretty much just a Boss Rush type thing, with eight different areas, each with one or two bosses, and an item fetch puzzle or two to deal with; problem is, combat certainly wasn't the first game's strong suit, and pretty much all you'll get here is more combat. The boss designs are truly nice and show the creative capabilities of the devs, but that's about all the praise I can give. Pretty much all but one of them boil down to "back away while taking pictures" and even that isn't particularly fun, as bosses tend to have movesets wildly incompatible with your slow character and stunlock you with annoying frequency.

All but two of the stages are recycled from the base game (with small changes at times, yeah, but still the same areas), so even exploring is off the table. The game has some nice set pieces, but even then they're badly executed - having a ghost girl count down to chasing you is legitimately spooky at first... and not very much on the fourth or fifth time it happens. The story is pretty much nonexistent and/or vague to the point of meaning nothing at all. Seriously, if there was any useful plot to be gleaned, I have no idea what it is.

To sum, good bosses with bad combat, barely any new areas to see, annoying gimmicks and backtracking and just about no development of the story. Not AWFUL for the price, but it's something I wish I had watched on Youtube instead. I'll be waiting for a new game from these devs, though, as I still have faith in them.

While the first game was linear, focusing on story. Keepers of the Dark is a hub based non-linear game. Where rooms can have puzzles or ghost to exorcise. However, all of the rooms are small reused portions of the first game. On top of that the puzzles are very simple, and the enemies are very easy as well. Where a puzzle from room 2 would need an item you get from room 5 as an example. The enemies are easy because you have infinite lives, and just respawn where you died. The ghosts don't even regenerate any of their health when you die. So as long as you do some damage to the ghost before you die. You will eventually win.
The story is told through silent pictures that happen after you finish a certain amount of rooms. No dialog or voice narration to go with it. But they are short and don't explain anything important.

So majority of the content is just reused portions of levels from the first game. But now with new objectives, and no story to go along with it.
Both Dreadout and Dreadout:KOTD are still buggy in 2020. The same bugs that happen in the first game happen here. The one I saw the most often is missing textures, and glitchy enemies .

So I played the original first (I got both in a humble bundle thing for a dollar), and that one's okay. It's nothing special but I mean, I enjoyed it.

But after that, it seems like the company must've been out of money because suddenly everything is written in EXTREMELY poor English.

For a great example, check out this ingame article you can find: https://imgur.com/EWIv0se

Yeah. Figure that one out.

It's embarassing enough when a flash game has this kind of broken English, but a full fledged game someone is charging money for? Come ON.

Play the original (tho wait for a sale, it's not worth the 15 or whatever it's charging). Avoid this.

This game is mostly combat, and the combat in this game is extremely unfun.

This game is basically an arcade mode of the first DreadOut game. It offers pretty much zero storyline, is glitchy in places and definitely does not have the same appeal that the first game had. The first game had buckets of atmosphere, a semi-decent storyline and was genuinely not a bad game. This game offers you 9 boss levels featuring some truly bizarre enemies, a few moments rich in atmosphere (which is pretty bad for a game like this) and not a lot else. There are a few levels and bosses that are pretty cool and if you're a fan of the first game I'd recommend getting this on sale just for those moments. If however you've never played the series, I genuinely cannot recommend this game... Take a look at the first instead!

So this sequel is not so great. But then again, neither was the first game, so that's not unexpected. Though this is better in that it runs smoother, worse in every other category.

You start out in a hall with 8 doors, each taking you to a locale from the first game. There you are tasked with banishing a ghost or two. Some ghosts require you to find items hidden throughout the other hallway doors before being able to discover them, which is cool.

The ghosts you have to banish are essentially bosses, and my goodness, I've never seen a group of more spectacularly annoying bosses. They take forever to kill, and the game seems to think it's some fluent action game. You have to run away from the ghosts a lot of the time, but most of them run faster than you, forcing you to always get hit before being hit. After slowly getting back up, you have a split second to snap a picture before they hit you again or move away. Trouble is, it takes forever to bring the camera up. I normally have to press the button twice for it to work. This is the same annoyance from the first game though. A lot of times I impatiently click the button too many times so that when I finally bring the camera up, I accidentally take it down. And if you want to run away from a boss to get enough distance to take the picture, it's very clumsy to do so. You have to come to a complete stop before bringing the camera up, not to mention turn around to face the ghost. By the time all this happens, your opportunity is gone.

Some bosses have you play hide and seek, and then glitch out repeatedly so that they aren't where they should be. Some have you chase them all over the place while getting crap thrown at you. And the last boss, oh boy. This one just hides under water and you've just got to wait around for her to pop out and hit you and then hope she sticks around long enough and at an appropriate distance for you to get a pic.

But despite getting hit all the time, I only died twice in the game, and that's because there's a ghost who unavoidably kills you twice. So it's pretty easy, just annoying.

I'd say give this one a hard pass, even if you liked the first one, because what little story was in the first game, it's not followed up in here, or if it is, I missed it completely.

A slight improvement from the first game yet still mundane. I have no idea what the storyline is supposed to be, it all feels like an excuse to have a bevy of strange ghosts. This wouldn't be a negative if half of the designs weren't awful and battling them didn't take an unnecessary amount of time. The gameplay is nowhere near the level of quality that justifies this much repetition, leading to the majority of players either grudgingly pressing on for completion's sake or just abandoning it.

Keep it in the dark.

4/10

while i liked the first dreadout because of its story and theme, i ended up giving it a negative review because of the technical issues (lost save files, bugs, crashes, etc).

keepers of the dark is the opposite - it's a lot better from a technical aspect, but the game sucks. it's basically a stand-alone boss fight dlc, but the "combat" was the worst gameplay aspect of the first dreadout. you have to stand still to use your camera, the fps to third person transitions are too slow for the combat, the bosses have stunlock moves, and the list goes on. if you've played something solid like bayonetta, this game is an exercise of frustration.

my recommendation? if you're into asian horror (which is fantastic in this series), just play the first dreadout knowing that it's a bit rough around the edges. if you like it, try keepers of the dark, but lower your expectations. otherwise, skip.

Its a cool sequel about the first game that explain the ending,but its literally only bossfight nothing more than that and sadly doesn't have the same atmosphere like his predecessor.