Designing a role playing game for the iOS isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do in the world, but it may not seem so with the games of this genre that came out in the App Store. Various titles with different takes on the RPG theme, ranging from the conventional to the novel. Perhaps there isn’t a lot that you can bring to the table now with so many RPGs already released, but there’s no shame in improving upon previous models. This is something that Dark Meadow tried to accomplish.

Dark Meadow sets the player as the silent and mysterious protagonist whose memory was wiped out. Waking from a broken-down hospital, you explore the place and encounter spirits, monsters, and so on. It’s up to you to piece together the puzzle as to why you’re there and perhaps get away from that veritable madhouse. This game revolves a lot around the random encounters against various monsters as you try to move around in this game. The combat system works a lot around timing offense and defense in order to deliver enough damage for the victory.

The visuals and graphics are quite fantastic and very detailed. If it is to be compared with the visuals of other games, it would be closest to those like Amnesia: The Dark Descent, perhaps Obscure, and especially the Silent Hill series. It’s quite eerie and chilling without relying on cliches and overused horror elements. Dark Meadow takes to the narrative progression for games and interactive media quite well, especially since it should be different from that of movies and other static media.

Another notable element in this game is the voice acting, which is a caliber or two above what is supposed to be in a mobile game. But Dark Meadow shows that portable media need not be too rudimentary in its design at all. We’ve moved with the times, so at least we can get some dubbed dialogue and narration in our mobile games now, which is quite welcome. With that said, the narrative in this game is quite a cool novelty in that it’s more like a game of finders-keepers. Clues are thrown around subtly during the game, so you have to pay attention in order to find what you should be looking for.

The problem with this game is that there are a lot of interruptions and random events that may not seem necessary. Due to the nature of its gameplay, it tends to give the player really long random encounters that can be very daunting. Combat and even just moving are start-and-stop affairs, so it may test your patience. You do get to pay more attention to the visual detail during these pauses, so perhaps it was deliberately made so in order to be somewhat like a scenic route to playing the game. It also takes quite a bit of time to learn this game as a whole, so it’s not really a lightweight at all.

Some people would say that it ripped off games like Infinity Blade, but so is everything else from other older classics. While being a derivative isn’t bad, being a lesser one is. With everything this game had going for it, it never quite built up to its potential. Considering that this is a 800-megabyte download, you’d expect more to be done with it in terms of gameplay. This still has a lot of aesthetic appeal, so you might still consider it if you have the cash or if it gets a discount.