The Darkest Files - ★★★★☆
The Darkest Files from Paintbucket Games sees players take the role of Esther Katz, a young prosecutor in 1950s Germany looking into historic crimes from the tail end of the Second World War. The game is a spiritual successor to Paintbucket’s earlier title, Through the Darkest of Times: my understanding is that it started out as a sequel to that game, but eventually stepped out of its shadow to become a title in and of itself. Both games are, unsurprisingly, pretty heavy experiences, going along with the studio's mission to develop video games that leave a lasting impact and focus on strong narratives. While the gameplay in the former – assigning tasks on a map for members of a resistance group between 1933 and 1945 – didn’t quite click for me, long-time readers won’t be surprised to hear that The Darkest Files sounds a lot more like “my sort of” game: digging through swathes of evidence and piecing together a story from various accounts… what’s not to like?
If we’re comparing the two titles, another thing worth noting is that a lot has happened since January 2020, when Through the Darkest of Times was released. The message offered didn’t feel quite as important to me back then; while I do think it's always important to keep one eye on the past, it felt like a lesson about what had come before, and not necessarily one about what was happening in the present. I had an interest in the time period, but it felt largely academic.
Image: Paintbucket Games
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Developer: Paintbucket Games
Publisher: Paintbucket Games
Release: 25 March 2025
Retail Price (Steam): 19,99€/$19.99/£15.49
Fast-forward to today, and those messages now feel far more pertinent, despite the relatively short amount of time that has passed. If you’ll allow me to be a little miserable and put my political hat on for a moment, with the atrocities of eighty years ago almost out of living memory, there are worrying global trends that, increasingly often, seem to mirror events of the 1930s. I’m not just referring to the orange elephant in the room: the rise of far-right populism in places you’d think should know better is concerning.
That’s not to add fuel to an already-raging fire, but to say this: I consider The Darkest Files to be an important game, given the current political climate. Paintbucket excellently illustrate the feeling that you're investigating things that, even as early as the 1950s, people were hoping they could forget, ignore, or pretend never happened in the first place. I know shamefully little about the years after World War II, but again, some of the more uncomfortable moments in The Darkest Files feel relevant almost seventy years after the game takes place.
Okay, political hat off – or as off as it can be, when talking about a game with this theme. Let’s actually talk about some gameplay. I’m going to get my main point of contention dealt with out of the gate, which is by-in-large more a problem with the genre than anything Paintbucket have done: the evidence system.
We’re skipping ahead a bit, but when you finally have your case together for each of the game's two extensive investigations, you need to present your findings in court and attempt to convict those you think have acted unlawfully. Each case comes with five questions, such as “Who went to the cell where Mr Naumann was held captive?”, all of which are answered with a character’s name. Assuming you’re playing Investigator Mode (which I highly recommend, though there is a Story Mode for players who want a less challenging experience) you’ll need to combine three pieces of evidence into a conclusion that proves your assertions.
Image: Paintbucket Games / IndieLoupe.com - Combining three documents to prove your assertations
The issue arises when a player thinks they’ve provided a logical explanation, but the game sees it in a slightly different way, and refuses their conclusion. They’re afforded four opportunities to get things right, and offered hints that point them in the right direction, but can still be left shifting items around hoping to select something that – according to the game – is more appropriate.
I sympathise with Paintbucket: there’s no easy way for a developer to consider absolutely everything that a player might think proves an answer while also maintaining an interesting scenario that actually requires deduction. If the ambiguity is removed from the evidence, with the items required being far too obvious, players won’t be fulfilled by ‘solving’ the case. Too vague, and the players won’t be able to come to any sort of conclusion at all. It’s not a problem I encountered often, and the game largely mitigates it by allowing for selection of a few alternative documents, but there were a couple of frustrating moments where I couldn’t get things to line up in the way the the judge wanted them to.
Image: Paintbucket Games / IndieLoupe.com
In terms of negative emotions, that frustration is far from the only one I felt across the playthrough, though probably the only one that Paintbucket weren’t going for. If you’ve got this far into the review I’m sure I don’t need to tell you, but this is not a cheerful game. Expect sadness, disgust, helplessness and anger.
On that last one: I don’t usually get angry when playing games, but I’m quite sure I’ve not sworn aloud at characters as often as I did when playing The Darkest Files. Take the first suspect I interviewed (incidentally by accident, having not checked his name properly) – I found myself immediately disregarding everything the shifty bastard told me, as I had good reason to believe some of the first words out of his mouth were a lie. That wouldn’t necessarily help me, as there was obviously some valuable information in his testimony, but the game makes it very easy not to trust what people are saying: to want to call everything they say a falsehood, even when there’s a ring of truth to it.
Image: Paintbucket Games / IndieLoupe.com - Yes, you were.
That’s in no small part thanks to the excellent voice cast, who contribute hugely to the immediate dislike that players can have of some of the game’s less savoury characters. if you’re going to have a fully-VA’d game you really need to nail the voice acting, and The Darkest Files does exactly that, to the point that I didn’t realise that many of the cast are not full-time actors. One such example is Esther Katz, the game’s protagonist, who is voiced by Almut Schwacke - also credited as the game’s composer and sound designer, which are two more of the game’s strong suits. Her character is probably the most important of all, and Schwacke delivers a strong performance that allowed me to quickly sympathise with Katz and inhabit the character. All the characters having authentic accents helps immerse players in the game’s setting and makes the world feel genuine, eliciting strong reactions to characters and events across the playthrough.
That aforementioned mission of Paintbucket’s — developing games that leave a lasting impact — has certainly been met by The Darkest Files. It provides a powerful reminder of the past at a time where it feels desperately needed, and backs it up with a solid art direction and brain-stimulating gameplay. The Darkest Files is awarded ★★★★☆ by IndieLoupe.com.
The reviewed product was provided by the developer.
