The Church in the Darkness showed early signs of promise. The top-down, strategy-infiltration game puts you in the shoes of an uncle who travels to the jungles of South America, in the hopes of checking in on his nephew following family concerns that he has been trapped in a cult.
It sounds like a fresh and unique storyline, and the approach to gameplay certainly backs that up. I don't recall any video game in a similar vein that's similar to the time I spent playing The Church in the Darkness. For that, developers Paranoid Productions should be celebrated.
One of the biggest disappointments that I found with my overall experience, however, comes in that you're not able to convince your nephew to leave the cult if you're playing a version of the game in which he's living a happy life. There are no negotiations, no matter what evidence you've found to suggest that being in Freedom Town will be detrimental to your relative in the long run.
That evidence will come in the form of notes and letters left scattered around the town, in cabinets and chests of drawers, allowing you to form an image of the community you're embedding yourself within. The announcements coming from Freedom Town's leaders, Isaac and Rebecca, will also give you an idea of the version of cult leaders you'll be dealing with.
At times, one of the pair will be an empathetic figure, and somebody you may actually get along with if you were back in the 'real world'. At others, they'll both be bloodthirsty criminals obsessed with keeping their members under tight lock and key, willing to destroy anybody who threatens that. Then there's the possibility that both are actually just trying to make a better world for themselves and their followers; and of course a whole series of different combinations of all of the previously-mentioned.
Oh, and don't bother trying to learn the map or placement of items from one game to the next; The Church in the Darkness will switch things up entirely with every single playthrough. When you die, you're given the option to play through with the exact same settings so that you can reach a conclusion in a world you were enjoying, but when you start things off from the very beginning, expect a whole new set of circumstances.
This suggests replayability, and that's definitely a part of how the game can be a success, but at most, I would say there are 12 hours-worth of content for completionists who like to see everything a game has to offer. At just a slice of the price of your regular video game however, I'd say that's a steal, even if the game isn't a totally groundbreaking offering.
The Church in the Darkness is available now on PC, Mac, Xbox One, PS4 and Nintendo Switch. A code for Xbox One was given to Female First in exchange for a fair and honest review.