First details emerge from Dark and Deep

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Single-sitting, first-person 3D conspiracy thriller coming to PC and consoles in 2024

Podcasts are great. But while some are meant only to inform and entertain, the titular podcast in the upcoming thriller Dark and Deep, by gaming professor Walter Woods from Savannah College of Art and Design, promises to be much more frightening in a very real and tangible way.

An obsessed fan of the "Dark and Deep" podcast, Samuel Judge suddenly finds himself "plunged into a shadowy and dangerous landscape" when the lines between reality and fantasy begin to blur. The podcast warns of "a killer on the run" and a conspiracy that runs all the way to the top levels of government, and to his horror Samuel soon discovers that what he's hearing hews "too close to home." And when a stranger gives him some mystical picture frames that serve as "windows into a terrifying world" that is invisible to the naked eye, it's up to Samuel to use these frames to "banish the darkness" or die trying.

Blending "horror, mystery, exploration ... with puzzle elements throughout," Dark and Deep is first-person, free-roaming cosmic horror game with a unique aesthetic. Many of its textures draw on the works of nineteenth-century artist Gustave Doré, who was renowned for his "detailed black-and-white illustrations of mythological and historical scenes." Survival is certainly one aspect of gameplay here, as you rely on "precious embers of light in the darkness to show your way," and the creatures that lurk in the shadows "want nothing more than to steal your light." But there will also be more cerebral obstacles to overcome, as you "solve physics puzzles using powerful ancient machines of cryptic origin [and] manipulate gravity and clear a path through the deadly fog" enveloping the nightmare realm. And for all its terrors, this is meant to be a "thought-provoking" story that can be completed in a single setting, projected to take about 2-3 hours for most players to finish.

While no release date has been announced yet, Dark and Deep is on track to launch on Steam and Epic sometime next year for Windows PC, along with console versions for PlayStation and Xbox platforms. In the meantime, the developer has started a Discord for fans to follow its progress.