Come for the Weird World of ‘Dark Pals: The 1st Floor’, Maybe Stay for the Derivative Gameplay [Review]

May 2, 2026 - 02:13

The premise is the main attraction. You are not a night guard or a helpless child. You are a janitor tasked with cleaning a haunted office building. The twist is that the building is infested with "Dark Pals," which are essentially corrupted, monstrous versions of cute cartoon characters. They look like something out of a fever dream, a mix of a forgotten 90s mascot and a body horror experiment. This visual design is genuinely unsettling and creative. The way they twitch, the way they stare, the sheer wrongness of their proportions... it is the best part of the game.

Unfortunately, the gameplay is where the novelty wears thin. The core loop is painfully derivative. You have a limited number of tools: a mop, a flashlight, and a keycard. You must navigate the first floor, cleaning up "anomalies" while avoiding the roaming Dark Pals. The monsters have predictable patrol patterns, and the game relies on cheap jump scares to generate tension. The flashlight battery drains in seconds, forcing you to hide in lockers and wait, which is tedious rather than terrifying. The puzzles are simple fetch-quests that feel like padding.

"Dark Pals: The 1st Floor" is a textbook example of a game that is more interesting to look at than to play. The art direction and monster design are inspired, but the gameplay is a hollow echo of the horror games that came before it. You might come for the weird world, but you likely will not stay for the derivative gameplay. It is a short experience, but even its brief runtime feels stretched thin. For fans of the genre who are desperate for a fresh coat of paint on a familiar formula, it might scratch an itch. For everyone else, it is a reminder that a good monster does not make a good game.