Dap does well in presenting a game that can give you the element of surprise, while still trying to give some sense of protection over your fellow daps.
Type: Single-player
Genre: Shooter, Adventure
Developer: Melting Parrot
Publisher: Melting Parrot
Release date: 29 Sep, 2021
Intro
Dap is a top-down shooter about a creature with the same name that tries to fight corruption. You’ll be able to recruit fellow daps as you progress, allowing you to unleash more attacks and open passages that can only be done with more daps.
Visuals
Dap presents us with visuals that look similar to the matrix world, but realistic at the same time. It looks like sprite graphics with higher quality due to some effects that are applied to it. The use of light filters in some areas help to give some sort of atmosphere to the game, while the different color in each chapter gives some variety to the look.
Story
To be honest, I found it hard to understand the story. I’m not sure if it’s because the story is just a simple one or if there is a subtle meaning to it. Dialogues are concise and vague enough to make you get the gist of what’s happening, although that might be the reason why it can be hard to understand the context sometimes. However, some dialogues can’t be skipped. It can be tiring to wait for the cutscene to be finished, especially when they aren’t talking in length.
The Game
Gameplay
The game feels like an action-adventure game where you can explore the area and fight enemies, except that your melee sucks. Enemies can damage you whenever you touch them, forcing you to use your ranged attack to hit them. Your ranged attack will curve before it hits the enemy though, so you need to get used to it first. Nevertheless, this turns the game into a top-down shooter with some gimmicks where you learn new abilities along the way.
Daps are your friend. Yes, you are dap, but so are the others. Recruiting more daps to your cause can help in a lot of ways, whether it’s to open a passage or fighting enemies. You can deal more bullets to the enemy depends on the number of daps that you have, although you need to charge them to unleash the bullets. This creates some sort of choice whether you want to wait until the charge is full or unleash them after you think that the bullets will be enough to kill the enemies.
Corruption can be harmful to you and other daps. Some parts of the forest will be marked with red color, where you can get corrupted if you linger for too long. This forces you to either make a fire to suppress the corruption or rush the area since you’ll get a game over if you somehow get corrupted. Your dap friends can also get corrupted, so you also have to watch out if you don’t want to deal with unexpected enemies and casualties in between. Your dap friends can die, and so are you.
Enemies spawn out of nowhere. One of the best things about Dap is that it tries to give you a horror element that can be unexpected as you play. More and more enemies will be introduced later on with different attack patterns and spawn patterns. Their spawn pattern can surprise you, and it never gets old until the end of the game.
Length and Difficulty
I finished the game in 6.9h and obtained the bad ending. You need to collect 12 collectibles to reach the good ending, and I only managed to get 10 of them. However, there is no way for you to revisit the area that you missed to search for the collectibles, and you must start the game from the beginning if you miss even one.
The difficulty is on the medium side. Some areas can be problematic with their number of enemies, but you can always try it again since save points are usually nearby. The boss fights and chase scenes also can be annoying due to their bulky HP and the need to react quickly, but it won’t give you any problem once you get used to it.
Problems
The save point only works once. There were several occasions when I still needed to explore the remaining areas for a collectible, and triggering the save point before you finished everything can be annoying since you need to obtain the collectible again if you die. Lastly, the vast and dark areas can be time-consuming to traverse.
Specs
Intel Core i5-9300H 2.40GHz, 8GB RAM, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650
Verdict
Dap does a good job of establishing a horror game with the element of surprise. I never get bored seeing the horror scenes and they are made carefully to surprise you whenever you see them for the first time. As someone who is not good with scary games, I assure you that it’s not scary. Most things just surprise you with their sudden appearance and you might even be forced to fight them if needed.
I like how the game always tries to experiment with new mechanics. You’re not always forced to defeat the enemies with your bullet, nor using your fellow daps to unlock the area. There is a variation to unlock an area where you need to sacrifice your fellow daps or a mechanic that forces you to figure out how to solve an area. You might even die a lot at first in these places and be forced to think differently since your “solution” doesn’t work. If you like the visuals and genre, do yourself a favor and buy this game.
