Out of the genres that I’ve tended to be the most disappointed with in the Switch eShop, horror has consistently stood out for a variety of reasons. Whether the issues have been with an over-reliance on jump scares, too many dull walking simulators with horror trying to spice them up somehow, or simply a lack of care or creativity, there’s been far more bad than good out there. Strangely enough, now thinking it over, one of the trends I can think of when it comes to better efforts has been to go old school. While games with a more pixel art 16-bit era look have a harder time delivering on the gore, that hasn’t typically stopped the games from grabbing your attention and sucking you in.

Dead of Darkness is pretty unapologetically old-school, whether that’s in terms of its look, the fact that you’ll be forced to rely on specific save points that aren’t terribly abundant, or that you’ll struggle with scarcity when it comes to critical resources. Whether that’s in the form of ammunition, or the means of keeping your character from spiraling into insanity from too much contact with the many creatures lurking outside, you’ll quickly need to work out under what circumstances you’re best facing your foes, and when you’re better off simply trying to run.

Of course, that doesn’t address the human side of the equation, which feels like it’s also chock full of plenty of folks who range from shady to outright scary. From the game’s opening moments the intrigue begins to build on that side of the fence, with a secret letter being urgently sent, someone who appears to be very angry and vengeful, and then someone meeting their demise in the dark. The thing is, this early phase, before everything gets rolling, does feel a little long and wordy, especially if you just want to get down to the scary stuff. But at least it all helps to set the stage for what’s to come. For survival horror veterans, most of the game and how it operates should feel familiar, just thankfully without the bad camera angles and other headaches that the genre opened with back in the Playstation days. For everyone else, it may not be a slam dunk, but if you’re itching for a decent horror title, you can absolutely do far worse than this.