I played a few platformers in my life, like Bloody Trapland, and even some Mario games as well. But I’ve never seen a game, like Dark Scrolls that has a big potential in its genre, but failed to work out.
Dark Scrolls is a 2026 action-platformer that combines shoot ’em up style with roguelike progression. It was developed by doinksoft, and published by Devolver Digital.
A Promising Start
Launching the game welcomes with a pixel art style menu that combines its unique artstyle with a spooky background soundtrack. It hyped me up and made me think that the game will be a great, non-stop action-platformer. The menu has a ‘Start’ and ‘Options’ menu. Both function as their name suggests. Starting the game switches the scene into an empty scenery with a graveyard in the middle. Here, once you press the input button, you will get to select your character to play with. There are 3 characters to choose from. Grizz, Pigeon and Emerys. Each represents different colors. I couldn’t find out what they mean during my playtime.
However, I did find a big issue that later haunts the players in the menus. If you press the ‘Options’ menu, there’s no Controls menu. This game has a really bad control, so remapping it is impossible. Later, you will see why I mean it.
Once you selected your character and spawned down, you can start playing. The game will give you an extra objective to do on the bottom left of the screen. This can be “Kill an X amount of enemies” for example. The reward is in-game currency which then you can use to buy in the available shop in the game. On the left side of the map, you can find 2 separate rooms. One is for the co-op experience. Yes, you can play this game with your friends, which I think is a great addition. The other room functions as a training room, where you can hit the training dummy, or funnily, it can hit you as well.
Starting the journey will switch the scene to a 2D map, that shows our starting point. This is a good design choice, it shows progression in a unique way. After that, we will land on the map. Here comes back the haunting thing I mentioned earlier, controls. Since the map is randomized every time you start it, the starting is also unpredictable. You don’t know what button is jump until you press every key on your keyboard. Spoiler, it is the ‘Z’ button, so I saved you from a panic attack like I had. Second issue, is the camera movement. It moves really slowly. The character moves twice as fast, and by standing on the edge of the map, you risk yourself getting hit from enemies outside of the boundaries, because yes, the game generates these enemies while they aren’t visible on the map. So poor design choices on both issues.
Lost in the Dark
The game obviously has more flaws than actual working things. To freeze the game, what you have to press is not the ‘Escape’, but ‘Enter’, like its an arcade game. It’s really random, I found it randomly as well at first. Interacting is happening with the ‘C’ key. Random as well, why would someone use ‘C’ as interaction? Not the only questionable control issues. Like I mentioned earlier, jumping is ‘Z’…not ‘Enter’, ‘Up Arrow’, or ‘W’…but ‘Z’. Throws the logic out the window. Moreover, if you press it twice, you perform a ground attack. The ground attack is really creative, but sadly the control ruins the fun. The other attack is done by pressing ‘X’, which throws axes at front of the character. Another really questionable control choice, but at this point nothing can surprise me. These issues are still in the game, not fixed, there’s no remapping option, just forced, weird, unusual controls all over the place. This can frustrate new players to this genre as well, and chase them away. Also, this was difficult for me as well, because I cannot make in-game screenshots. For whatever reason, the ‘F12’ key just doesn’t work at all. So the only way for me to take screenshots were using external apps for them.
The game also contains emotes. It feels really unusable for a platformer game. I get the idea of co-op interaction, but a platformer isn’t supposed to prioritize co-op features over the singleplayer experience. What’s more, you can buy and unlock them in stores. Set up multiple for yourself, and interact with them to your friends.
Final Verdict
Overall, this game isn’t good. I don’t like the issues it has, and the potential it had. It went like a rollercoaster. From the top to the bottom very quickly. Messy controls, no clear instruction, or story/level elements, bad camera movement and designs. The artstyle makes it unique with its rather spooky soundtrack, but that’s all that’s really going for it.
