Darkwood is a brutal survival horror game with crafting elements.
You spend your days collecting resources and advancing the storyline and your nights defending your homebase.

It's definitely stronger on the horror side then on the crafting side, as I'm finding myself sweating bullets each night,
but cursing the game every time I'm short just one plank of wood or unit of gasoline,
as each trip out puts you in danger and you have no idea where to find the resources you need.

Darkwood strongest point is it's incredible atmosphere and it does its storytelling really well when you encounter those events, the playable prologue had me on the edge of my seat.

Unfortunately it falls flat due to it's own mechanics right after the prologue, as it part open world game, but you quickly realize how closed off everything is. It's "open" in the sense that the maps are procedurally generated, but the game has an artificially slow pacing due to areas being gated by resources.

Managing the scarce resources is quite difficult as a new player as it's a balancing act as with many of the systems in the game. You need light to be able to survive at night, but you need fuel in the generator to power the saw. Resources don't respawn and are sometimes guarded by wolves which you need to avoid until you get a suitable weapon.
The earliest weapon a nail with boards, requires a working saw.

Minor Spoilers Ahead, I'm sure I'm missing something, but In order to exit the first major area, I need access to a Moltov cocktail to burn the infestation. This requires a level 3 Workbench, this needs multiple boards, nails and a toolbox,
It feel like a lot of the horror element is sacrificed when I'm spending multiple days looking for gasoline in order to power the generator in order to create the boards, to finally be able to upgrade the workbench, so I can make the Molotov.
All of this while remembering not to use up too much gasoline as you need to power the lights when it gets dark.

In addition I can understand that it improves the horror aspect to minimize UI, but to me the realistic day/night cycle and mapping system are super annoying. Running out of daylight means certain death if your not in your base and not knowing how much time you have left just adds another element of things to keep track of, which personally I hate.

Overall a polished game with many complex systems, but I find it's really difficult to keep track of all of them in tandem. This games not for me, but if your looking for a difficult survival crafting game and you're okay with a bit of initial grinding, the horror side is really well done and worth checking out for fans of the genre.