So 6 friends set out to explore an old, supposedly uninhabited castle just for an evening of fun. Only it is a huge, creepy, strange, and interest grabbing castle that is a complex, maze-like adventure that presents multi-layered challenges in order to figure out just what has and is going on and what will be the final fate of the 6 adventurers.
Simple starting out, the castle grows more complicated with various twists and turns that will keep the player guessing ---- yet there is a certain logic to the sprawling layout that will keep you going for just one more area or room.
Save frequently, and explore everything and everywhere as the castle is loaded with rewards and surprises ---- always fully investigate your surroundings completely.

The art is fantastic ---- from the castle layout to the enemies ---- all are very well done.

The characters are mixed from serious to strange yet keep the story moving and the interest up.

One of the best aspects of the game is the challenge level ---- never too easy but not such a challenge that you get discouraged ---- it strikes just the right balance. I'm having a lot of fun with this one, and I believe it is one that any rpg fan will enjoy. Recommended!

As typical for Aldorlea Games, this is an RPGMaker-built game, but with pronounced survival horror elements: Your party spends the entire game trying to escape a haunted mansion, with no stores, a limited supply of items to acquire, and no inns or other cheap ways to restore HP (though skill points recover during battle, and some skills can heal HP).

The gameplay offers quite a bit of fresh air. You have the usual leveling up by getting experience points from battles, but you can also choose a special upgrade from a selection after defeating a boss, such as increasing a certain stat or increasing a skill to a different tier. The skills themselves are delightfully oddball while also useful. For instance, one does extra damage if the enemy is afraid, and another does a whole onslaught of hits to randomly selected foes.

Oh, and you have a whopping six party members. I've played dozens of RPGs over the years, but this is the first time I've seen that outside of a Tactical RPG. You'd expect having that many party members would make the battles too slow or too easy, or both, but the design avoids both those pitfalls. As many as your party members are, enemy parties at times outnumber them, and they can throw out plenty of hits. Once all commands are entered, combat animations play out so rapidly that it can actually be hard to follow what's going on. If you like being able to keep track of every move in a turn-based RPG, that may be a problem, but it certainly keeps the pace of battles nice and fast.

There are two difficulty modes, Illusion and Terror. Illusion is a bit easy once you figure out the game mechanics, but even then it's not so easy that you don't have to think about what you're doing. I wanted to try the game on Terror before writing this review, but life is so busy that I can't commit to that in the near future, and assuming there is a significant difference between Illusion and Terror, it's safe to say that this game offers sufficient challenge to those who want some.

In fact, in one sense the challenge is too steep. While the game involves little backtracking, there are a couple parts where it's difficult to figure out where you need to go next. In particular, after beating the spider boss you must return to a previous room, to a specific generic tile, and press the action button - without any hint whatsoever that you're supposed to do this. In fact, the resulting cutscene opens with the party members basically saying "What the heck do we do now?" That's too obscure even for a secret area, much less a required task to progress. And wandering around long corridors, fighting enemies you've since leveled beyond while you search for where to go next outright kills the pacing - a big problem in a horror game.

Which brings us to story and atmospherics. You can already see in the game's trailers that it has strong, distinctive character art and doom-laden music, the latter of which you may recognize as the same stock music used in Aldorlea's earlier Fortress of Hell. In fact, a number of assets are from Fortress of Hell, including the battle pacing, so if you've played that game you'll feel right at home. On the downside, it may be *too* familiar, and the character art could use more images; some party members only have one facial expression.

This is all the more a shame because the characters do have considerable depth. As you wander through the murky halls of the haunted house... or is it a castle?... you're increasingly teased with the characters' relationships and the mystery of the macabre world they've fallen into and why they're seemingly trapped there.

However, without spoiling anything, none of it ever pays off. At all. The ending is frustrating rather than scary, offering neither triumph for the characters you've worked to defend nor the slightest explanation of where they are or who their enemies are. I realize that copping out of any why or wherefore is a commonly accepted foible in the horror genre, but it is a foible nonetheless.

Still, the game has to be given credit for atmosphere. After viewing the disappointing ending, I turned off my computer, brushed my teeth, and strangely started to feel a bit... on edge. As I opened the door to my bedroom, the plastic covering for the suit hanging on the door rustled, and the sound made my insides clench with dread.

Stepping into my bedroom, I seriously considered whether there might be something evil inside my closet. It was a relatively cool night, so I turned the ceiling fan off. I got in bed, pulled the sheets over me... and soon conceded that I had to get back up and turn the ceiling fan back on, because the silence was just terrifying.

I'll leave you with that: Despite some considerable flaws, A Plunge into Darkness offers a spooky, often surrealistic, and haunting experience. Since that is, after all, its advertised selling point, it's worth a buy for those who want a horror RPG.

meh

Not wild about ending and last boss battles were a long slog but i liked it . Fun game

Short and entertaining. story line wasn't to bad. only problem is the boss battles at the end felt like they was never ending

A plunge into darkness is a short horror game made with RPGMaker. It took me a while to digest this game after I played it as I don't really play horror games, but overall I liked it in the end.

Overall I felt the game had an interesting story about 6 people as they tried to find a way out of the place they had entered, and as you played you got to watch how the events slowly affected them. Only thing I didn't like is I felt the last two boss battles went on a little too long even on Easy mode, and could probably stand to have a little less HP in the end.

Overall though worth checking out if you need a short game to play for a day or so, and like horror games.

You and your friends are playing DnD in the woods when you decide to go visit an old haunted castle. Trapped inside you must now find a way out. A relatively short game, about 4 hrs, A Plunge into Darkness plays and feels like something I would expect from an old horror flash game (the writing especially reminds me of what I would expect from a fan-made indie horror game... but in the best way). Even though the enemy variety is somewhat lacking, the animations aren't anything crazy, and the mechanics aren't anything new, I still enjoyed my time with the game and would recommend picking it up on a sale. The game achieves a tense atmosphere and has great pacing. The developers did a good job giving the characters each their own unique personality as well - the relationships of the characters are really a strong point for the game (although don't expect anything terribly in-depth as the game is pretty short). Playing on the higher difficulty setting the game never felt too easy or too hard. Balancing was well done, with the game catching me off guard every time I started to get comfortable enough to hit the auto-battle button. While this was my first Aldorlea game it felt fairly familiar, with nothing that stood out as poorly done. Overall, I would recommend this game if you're looking for a quick game to play in the evenings if you're bored.

P.S. If you're planning on playing this game just note there's a part where you might get stuck as the next step is not really explained or hinted at.

There is a spider boss about half way through the game, once you defeat it you need to backtrack to the basin room before it and interact with the objects there to progress.

Overall Score:
---{ 7/ 10 }---
☐ 1
☐ 2
☐ 3
☐ 4
☐ 5
☐ 6
☑ 7
☐ 8
☐ 9
☐ 10

---{ Graphics }---
☐ You forget what reality is
☐ Beautiful
☐ Good
☑ Decent
☐ Bad
☐ Don‘t look too long at it
☐ MS-DOS

---{ Gameplay }---
☐ Very good
☐ Good
☑ It's just gameplay
☐ Mehh
☐ Watch paint dry instead
☐ Just don't

---{ Audio }---
☐ Eargasm
☐ Very good
☑ Good
☐ Not too bad
☐ Bad
☐ I'm now deaf

---{ Audience }---
☐ Kids
☑ Teens
☑ Adults
☐ Grandma

---{ PC Requirements }---
☐ Check if you can run paint
☑ Potato
☐ Decent
☐ Fast
☐ Rich boi
☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer

---{ Difficulty }---
☐ Just press 'W'
☐ Easy
☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master
☐ Significant brain usage
☐ Difficult
☐ Dark Souls

---{ Grind }---
☐ Nothing to grind
☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks
☑ Isn't necessary to progress
☐ Average grind level
☐ Too much grind
☐ You'll need a second life for grinding

---{ Story }---
☐ No Story
☐ Some lore
☑ Average
☐ Good
☐ Lovely
☐ It'll replace your life

---{ Game Time }---
☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee
☑ Short
☐ Average
☐ Long
☐ To infinity and beyond

---{ Price }---
☐ It's free!
☐ Worth the price
☑ If it's on sale
☐ If u have some spare money left
☐ Not recommended
☐ You could also just burn your money

---{ Bugs }---
☑ Never heard of
☐ Minor bugs
☐ Can get annoying
☐ ARK: Survival Evolved
☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs

cromos

not good

I am 32 years old.

My ex-wife and I have a daughter together, and we adopted our son together. Both are now 4 years old.

When we were going through our separation, I felt lost and unhappy. I was self-destructive. One day, I was so angry with everything spiraling out of control that I punched a concrete wall in a moment of overwhelming emotion. This resulted in breaking my fifth metacarpal in my right hand—the hand I worked with, played games with, and used to carry my children to bed—the hand I desperately needed to ensure I could continue providing.

Upon learning the severity of the self-inflicted damage, I became almost suicidal. Keep in mind that just a few months before this, I was the happiest man, with no history of depression or anxiety. I had never experienced anger outbursts, nor was I the type to break down and cry, but I was in a tough situation that truly prevented me from seeing the light on the other side.

With nothing better to do, I looked for a game I could play WITH ONE HAND while recovering. Somehow, I stumbled upon this game and read some of the comments. I decided it was worth a try... I must admit I didn't beat the game, nor did I play as much as some of you. In fact, I may have played this game for only a day or two. That being said, after doing so, I had a new joy and hope for life. I managed to leave behind the pain and suffering that had been thrust upon me. I could experience the joy and happiness of other people. I relaxed for 5 ♥♥♥♥ minutes listening to this music, long enough to realize that I would be okay.

After realizing this, I turned off the game and went back to work. My hand hurt a lot, but I was motivated. I stopped feeling so sorry for myself and became the father I needed to be at that moment, not the weak boy I was behaving like.

Today, I am close friends with the mother of my children. We don't fight, argue, or say hurtful things to each other. We are parents and friends.

Now I have 3 children. My third child is, wait, ALSO 4 YEARS OLD. The woman I am with was going through a very similar situation at the time of my separation, and we just unexpectedly stumbled into each other's lives. We have been dating for a year and are very happy together.

Moral of the story: you never know what life has in store for you, and if I had given up when all odds were against me, I wouldn't be where I am today. This silly little game helped me realize that.

Thank you.