The Woods Are Dark

Baf's Guide

A horror game in which you are drawn to go check out an old cottage where, years before, hideous murders occurred. To give it credit, it actually provides a slightly more reasonable justification for this than most horror stories do. The early atmosphere is also fairly strong, with interesting touches of local Irish color and an austere but reasonably successful setting. Due either to interpreter incompatibilities (I played on MacScare, which is not officially sanctioned) or to the game's internal problems, I ran into a couple of nasty bugs, however, and on turning to a walkthrough I was not as happy with some of the later parts of the game as with the beginning. There are occasional moments of bad parsing, as in all but the most rigorously-written and -tested ADRIFT games. Still, a horror aficionado may well enjoy it, and it has some nice moments.

-- Emily Short