Darklings review

“There are darknesses in life and there are lights, and you are one of the lights, the light of all lights.” – Brom Stoker, Dracula

Darklings is an instantly beautiful, instantly challenging, and instantly fun touch based adventure game. Travel between magical worlds fending off hordes of light-stealing darklings in game that radiate a strong sense of atmosphere created by the silhouetted, noire style environments. Fast-paced, gesture driven gameplay mixed with rewarding upgrades keep Darklings interesting and addictive.

While the gameplay is simple and intuitive, Darklings features constant and increasingly numerous enemies to create a difficult yet enjoyable experience. Use a finger to match the shapes presented on the approaching darklings’ heads in order to possess and purge them of their light. Light is released in the form of collectible stars which can then be captured by swiping a finger over them and dragging them toward Lum, the player’s character. Drawing symbols in quick succession creates higher combos with more stars to be collected. Each level is concluded by a challenging boss fight that yields a large number of stars and passage to the next level.

Once an individual game is ended by either being touched by enemies or running out of time, return to the home-screen store to spend hard earned stars on a variety of upgrades, powers, or costumes that help create larger combos and extend later play throughs.

A more difficult side of the game is that upgrades are expensive and can take a long time and many rounds of gameplay to purchase. If you get too antsy for them however, this can be mitigated by spending actual cash for more stars.

Darklings is an exciting game and the quick, challenging rounds enables it to be played in both short spurts or long sessions. The beautiful aesthetic and thrilling gameplay create one of the most unique and fun experience for iOS devices.