Dark Atlas: Infernum, review of a psychological horror ordeal

There's an undeniable fascination with esotericism, in that thin, hazy line where the reality we know begins to crumble to make way for something older, darker, and incomprehensible. It's the promise Lovecraft made to us a century ago and continues to reverberate in pop culture: fear doesn't reside in the monster you see, but in the impossibility of understanding the architecture of the nightmare that surrounds you. Dark Atlas: Infernum, developed by Night Council Studio, presents itself with precisely this ambitious premise. It aims to be a journey into the fractured mind of a powerful woman, an odyssey through personal and collective apocalypses, promising to blend psychological horror with a dense lore of secret orders and forbidden rituals.

On paper, it had all the makings of one of the possible indie surprises of the year, that raw gem capable of unsettling autumn nights. However, after spending hours wandering its labyrinthine corridors, the prevailing feeling isn't terror but a deep, persistent sense of bitterness for what this game could have been. Dark Atlas: Infernum stumbles over its own feet, offering an experience that alternates glimpses of undeniable gothic beauty with design choices so frustrating that you wish the apocalypse would arrive sooner to end our suffering.

A Cryptic Narrative

Our descent into the abyss begins as Natalia Asensio, Grand Master of the Night Council, an esoteric order that seems to have stepped straight out of a Umberto Eco novel rewritten under the influence of hallucinogens. The outside world is in chaos: violent storms, blood-red skies, and spectral apparitions suggest that the end of times is near. But our battle is, at least initially, much more intimate and claustrophobic. We awaken imprisoned in a place that defies logic, with our memory in pieces and a mysterious, omnipresent voice, "The Word," guiding us (or perhaps mocking us?) through a fragmented path of memory recovery, forcing us to question our own sanity.

From a purely narrative standpoint, the game has a magnetic charm. The lore built around the Council, rituals, and the nature of reality itself is rich and intriguing. It speaks of collapsing dimensions, entities that transcend human understanding, and the weight of forbidden knowledge. The way the story is presented to the player, primarily through scattered documents and internal monologues, requires an uncommon level of attention and dedication from the player. It's a decidedly "old-school" approach, which doesn't spoon-feed the user with explanatory cutscenes every five minutes, but asks them to piece together the puzzle independently, an intellectual aspect that I sincerely appreciated.

However, the execution of this narrative suffers from a huge problem: the voice acting. While the atmosphere might aspire to a medium-to-high level production, the English voice acting abruptly brings us back to earth with a quality that calling amateurish is an understatement. The lines of dialogue, often written with deliberately ornate, complex language laden with esoteric terminology, are delivered with an almost always wrong, flat, or completely absent emphasis. This disconnect between what we see and what we hear breaks immersion precisely in the moments that should be the most dramatic and full of pathos. It's extremely difficult to fear for the fate of humanity or feel terror when Natalia reacts to the sight of an indescribable cosmic horror with the monotone, bored tone of someone reading a grocery list, depriving the character of the gravitas that her role as "Grand Master" would require.

An Evolved Walking Simulator

The beating heart of Dark Atlas: Infernum is exploration. The game is essentially configured as an evolved walking simulator, where our main task is to navigate interconnected environments, solve environmental puzzles, and find the way to proceed. And here we come to the first, gigantic obstacle that undermined my experience: the absence of a map.

In a linear game, this wouldn't be a problem, but Dark Atlas throws us into labyrinthine environments – cyclopean libraries, ruined hospitals, endless underground passages – without any tool to orient ourselves. The developers' intention was clearly to increase the sense of disorientation and claustrophobia, forcing the player to visually memorize paths. The result, however, is constant frustration. I found myself circling for tens of minutes in the same section, not because the puzzle was difficult, but because every corridor looked the same as the others and I had no idea where I was in relation to the objective.

The puzzles themselves are a mix of brilliant insights and obtuse design. Some puzzles require manipulating objects or interpreting esoteric symbols in a logical and satisfying way. Others, unfortunately, seem to rely on "pixel hunting," forcing us to obsessively click on every dark corner in the hope of finding the tiny key object we missed. Here enters the "Clypeus," a kind of magical shield/visor that Natalia can summon. It's an interesting mechanic: the Clypeus allows us to see invisible traces, decipher seals, and, in theory, protect ourselves. The visual effect when we activate it is suggestive, distorting reality and revealing a hidden layer of the world, but its practical utility often boils down to a simple button to see what to do next, taking away some of the mystery.

The Frustration of Stealth Dynamics

If exploration oscillates between charm and annoyance, the survival component is where the game collapses ruinously, dragging much of the experience with it. We have no weapons to defend ourselves, which is even a predictable standard in games of this type. When we encounter the hostile entities that populate these nightmares – unsettling and grotesque spectral figures – the only option is to flee or hide.

The problem is that the stealth mechanics are rudimentary and unrefined. The enemies' artificial intelligence is erratic: sometimes they see you through walls from miles away, other times you can literally walk past them without them reacting. When you are discovered (and it will happen often, not because of you but because of the level design), a chase sequence begins that almost always ends with an instant game over. Natalia moves with exasperating slowness; even while running, it feels like driving a shopping cart with a broken wheel. There's no sense of agility, no frenzy of survival, just the resignation of having to reload the last checkpoint.

Speaking of checkpoints, the save system at launch was almost sadistically punitive, forcing players to redo entire sections of the game, including unskippable dialogues and slow puzzles, after every death. Fortunately, this is where the patch released on November 24th comes in. I must credit the developers for (partially) listening to complaints. The update rebalanced the prologue and added several manual and automatic save points, making progression less painful. I noticed a clear improvement especially in the first chapters, where dying before meant losing twenty minutes of progress, now you restart from a more reasonable position. The patch also corrected some critical bugs that blocked progression in the library (Chapter 2) and improved the visibility of essential objects like chess pieces, which were almost invisible in the dark before. However, a bandage doesn't heal a broken leg: the stiffness of movement and poor AI remain unchanged. There is a "Story Mode" that removes enemies, allowing you to enjoy only the plot and atmosphere, and honestly, it's the way I recommend approaching the title to avoid nervous breakdowns, even if it implicitly admits the failure of the survival design.

A Half-Painted Picture

Visually, Dark Atlas: Infernum is a paradox. Powered by Unreal Engine 5, it offers glimpses of evident gothic beauty, with lighting being the true protagonist of the package: candles casting flickering shadows on stone walls, aseptic lights flickering in hospital corridors, external storms illuminating dark rooms. The artistic direction has excellent taste in creating scenarios that are both realistic and dreamlike, dirty and detailed. The rain, the mud, the texture of old books: there's an attention to static detail that deserves praise.

As soon as something moves, however, the illusion shatters. The animations are stiff, wooden, lacking weight. Seeing Natalia's hands interact with objects is a dive into the past of two console generations. Furthermore, technical performance is unstable. Even on powerful hardware, the game suffers from sudden and inexplicable frame rate drops, especially when moving from one area to another or during the more intense particle effects of the Clypeus. Screen tearing is frequent and annoying, ruining the image's clarity.

The audio compartment, voice aside, is instead of excellent quality. Environmental sounds – the howling wind, creaking footsteps, distant moans – are expertly mixed and contribute to creating that atmosphere of constant tension that is the true (and perhaps only) solid strong point of the game. The soundtrack, while not memorable, accompanies the action well without ever becoming invasive.