Gloomwood Review

Currently at the moment New Blood Interactive seem to be establishing themselves as the Christopher Nolan of the Indie market. That being if you load up one of their titles you can be sure it’ll be at worst an extremely well put together game and at best it’ll capture the imagination of the player with a compelling gameplay loop and on occasion narrative.

Gloomwood is one of the latest titles in the works at New Blood. Being initially developed by Dillon Rogers and written by Roy Graham with fellow members of New Blood, Dave Oshry and David Szymanski joining the project later on, Gloomwood is a Victorian inspired stealth survival horror shooter. 

Whilst the game is currently still in development that hasn’t stopped fans of the project continually delving into the rich world the game has to offer in it’s 30–40-minute demo. 

Story

The story at the moment as you can imagine for a demo is not fully fleshed out but is still one of extreme intrigue. The very basic explanation of the story is that your character, known only as ‘Doctor’ has to make his way over to Countess Sylvia’s Manor on the main street while attempting to avoid the various guards and creatures you encounter on the way there. 

However, scattered throughout the level you will find various letters which help to expand the world whilst still leaving the overarching story open to the players imagination.

Gameplay & Graphics

Most comments or reviews surrounding the game have described Gloomwood as Thief (Eidos Montréal & Square Enix) but with guns. This “review” is a very surface level look at what Gloomwood is when in actuality while it may at times present itself as such is far from it. Thief presented itself with very few horror elements and acted much more as an overall stealth game. 

Gloomwood also differentiates itself from Thief through its open world approach to both storytelling and level progression. Throughout my multiple playthroughs of the demo I found that whilst the overall goal was the same there was a great level of player choice involved with how you choose to approach each section.

While Gloomwood is certainly described as a stealth title I found that there was little to no repercussion for being discovered by enemy NPCs unless they were wielding a shotgun. However, I’m willing to overlook this as I imagine the demo is acting as an introductory level and as such, I can only assume that the game once fully released will present the player with greater consequence in future levels.

The game’s arsenal is also quite diverse but familiar. As you progress throughout the level you will equip various items such as a cane-sword, revolver pistol and a shotgun. And whilst players might be disappointed in the inclusion of such powerful weaponry as this might detract from the stealth factor, for the most part the ammo for each weapon is quite scarce on the medium to hard difficulties.