''The Church in the Darkness'' is an

action-adventure The action-adventure genre is a video game hybrid genre that combines core elements from both the action game and adventure game genres. Typically, pure adventure games have situational problems for the player to solve to complete a storyli ...

video game. It was originally announced in 2016 to ship in early 2017, but was finally released in 2019 for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

PlayStation 4 The PlayStation 4 (PS4) is a home video game console developed by Sony Interactive Entertainment. Announced as the successor to the PlayStation 3 in February 2013, it was launched on November 15, 2013, in North America, November 29, 2013 in ...

, and

Xbox One The Xbox One is a home video game console developed by Microsoft. Announced in May 2013, it is the successor to Xbox 360 and the third base console in the Xbox series of video game consoles. It was first released in North America, parts of ...

. It was designed by

Richard Rouse III Richard Rouse III is an American video game designer best known as the designer of '' The Suffering'' (2004) and the author of ''Game Design: Theory & Practice''. Career Rouse produced two Macintosh games, fantasy RPG ''Odyssey: The Legend of ...

under the name Paranoid Productions.

Gameplay

''The Church in the Darkness'' is an "action-infiltration" game set inside a religious cult in the 1970s. The game revolves around an ex-law enforcement officer named Vic who attempts to get inside an isolated religious colony called "Freedom Town" to check in on his sister's son, Alex. The leaders, Isaac and Rebecca Walker of the "Collective Justice Mission", preach

socialism Socialism is a left-wing economic philosophy and movement encompassing a range of economic systems characterized by the dominance of social ownership of the means of production as opposed to private ownership. As a term, it describes the e ...

and sustainable agricultural living in a

Christian Christians () are people who follow or adhere to Christianity, a monotheistic Abrahamic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. The words ''Christ'' and ''Christian'' derive from the Koine Greek title ''Christós'' (Χρι ...

society. They are voiced by the couple,

John Patrick Lowrie John Patrick Lowrie (born June 28, 1952) is an American actor, musician and author best known for voicing the Sniper in ''Team Fortress 2'' and various characters in '' Dota 2''. He has played Sherlock Holmes in the radio series ''The Further A ...

and

Ellen McLain Ellen McLain (born 1952/1953) is an American voice actress. She is best known for providing the voice of GLaDOS, the primary antagonist of the ''Portal'' video game series, the Combine Overwatch in '' Half-Life 2'', and the Administrator, the a ...

. The story unfolds through Isaac and Rebecca's regular updates on the camp's

public address system A public address system (or PA system) is an electronic system comprising microphones, amplifiers, loudspeakers, and related equipment. It increases the apparent volume (loudness) of a human voice, musical instrument, or other acoustic sound sou ...

. Some elements of the game are

procedurally generated In computing, procedural generation is a method of creating data algorithmically as opposed to manually, typically through a combination of human-generated assets and algorithms coupled with computer-generated randomness and processing power. In ...

, with each start changing people's

allegiance An allegiance is a duty of fidelity said to be owed, or freely committed, by the people, subjects or citizens to their state or sovereign. Etymology From Middle English ''ligeaunce'' (see medieval Latin ''ligeantia'', "a liegance"). The ''al ...

s, beliefs, and camp layout.

Development

The game's premise arises from Rouse's lifelong fascination with

cults In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. This ...

. Rouse has been a fan of " open-narrative" games since the mid-'80s and he was "stunned" to see the many popular games of 2016 with fixed narratives. The game has been said to have "very obvious echoes of

Jonestown The Peoples Temple Agricultural Project, better known by its informal name "Jonestown", was a remote settlement in Guyana established by the Peoples Temple, a U.S.–based cult under the leadership of Jim Jones. Jonestown became internationall ...

". Rouse was particularly intrigued by the

Source family Father Yod (pronounced ''Yōde''), or YaHoWha, born James Edward Baker (July 4, 1922 – August 25, 1975), was the American owner of one of the country's first health food restaurants, on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles. He founded a spiri ...

, a spiritual commune in the late 1960s which was situated in the

Hollywood Hills The Hollywood Hills are a residential neighborhood in the central region of Los Angeles, California. Geography The Hollywood Hills straddle the Cahuenga Pass within the Santa Monica Mountains. The neighborhood touches Studio City, Univer ...

Reception

The game received "mixed or average" reception at

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...

. Robin Burks wrote for Screen Rant, "the big ideas don't live up to the hype with a game that's so small and gives the player very little to do."

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Church in the Darkness, The 2019 video games Action-adventure games MacOS games Nintendo Switch games PlayStation 4 games Single-player video games Stealth video games Video games about cults Video games developed in the United States Video games set in South America Video games set in the 1970s Windows games Xbox One games Fellow Traveller Games games