DarkSwitch was the first appointment I booked at gamescom 2025, thanks to a friendly PR rep who saw my attendance announcement on X—shout-out to Alex! Luckily, he knew his audience, and I was exactly the right person to come check out the game, perhaps even to a fault. I have been very invested in city builders late, with Thrive: Heavy Lies The Crown, Citadelum and even Civ VII on my gaming playlist (Yes, I know, Civ is more strategy, but they all belong under the same umbrella to me). I am so glad I booked the appointment, as Cyber Temple is building something I really can’t wait to get my hands on with DarkSwitch.
Throughout the game, your world will need to learn to survive in the trees and battle a dangerous fog and its mysteries to the best of their ability. The story goes deeper than this, into an ancient power or technology, but for the purpose of this demo, we aren’t there yet. For now, you construct buildings to the side and wrap around trees to avoid this deadly fog. Eventually, you will find ways to combat the fog and build bits and pieces on the ground, but you are primarily in this massive tree.
You will need to build not only the means to survive but also to thrive. Starting small, you will need homes, mushroom foragers, wood gatherers and more. Each profession has people who are skilled, people who struggle and those somewhere in between. This affects the quality of the work, as well as the villagers’ happiness.
“DarkSwitch is beautifully designed.”
There are also day and night shifts, so you can have people working around the clock to balance supply and demand. At first, these shifts are 12 hours long, creating long days for workers and lowering their happiness. Later, you can divide them into three eight-hour shifts, easing the strain on your people.
Another factor to consider is the path workers must take to reach jobs and homes. Building vertically around a tree requires many paths and ladders. While building, you can see the path highlighted in green. Keeping this in mind helps keep villagers happy and ensures they arrive at work on time. You can also see a grey outline of possible future upgrades. This feature is valuable, as it lets players avoid tearing down and restarting when a building no longer fits. You can demolish structures later, but you cannot move them.
You will also need to make choices for your city that can affect it later on. For instance, new people came to our town, and I needed to decide whether or not to let them in. One option noted that we need the people for work, another mentioned we couldn’t trust them. I can’t help but draw comparisons to a title I previously reviewed, The Tribe Must Survive.
“With all this in mind, DarkSwitch is shaping up to be a rich city builder with a strong art style and distinctive building mechanics.”
The base story in DarkSwitch is very, very similar to The Tribe Must Survive. Something lurks in the darkness (the fog in DarkSwitch’s case). You use fire to keep your tribe safe from danger (to keep the fog away). Your people generate fear and go insane (fear and go to the hospital). Even the page that popped up for the quest above looked the same. With such a short time with DarkSwitch, I can’t draw any other comparisons, but I can tell you what’s different.
For starters, in DarkSwitch, you are building a functioning city, complete with jobs, needs, happiness, fear and more. You will need more than just meat, crops, beds and religion to survive. Though there are scouts in The Tribe Must Survive, in DarkSwitch, they are far more hands-on, allowing you to choose the locations to scout, and you get a better sense of where to place things rather than just dropping things down and hoping they make it back before dark.
DarkSwitch is beautifully designed. At the start, I had 55 people living in my village, and would click through them to see the different versions of villagers. Many were different, with some of the same kind of villager being the same, but so far, the designs are unique and quite striking. When I asked about the use of AI, I was assured all portraits were individually created by the development team.
The game carries a spooky yet steampunk vibe. I enjoyed zooming in to watch villagers move around and to examine the details of each building. In later stages, with structures such as crop fields, you can view both the station and individual crops up close. The developers did not stop at visual details. Even from a short demo, it is clear that the story and gameplay are layered and ambitious.
That said, it is difficult not to notice the similarities with The Tribe Must Survive. However, that title is not a city builder, but rather a survival game. With all this in mind, DarkSwitch is shaping up to be a rich city builder with a strong art style and distinctive building mechanics. The base story may feel familiar, but the developers have turned the gameplay up a notch. I am eager to play more.
A DarkSwitch demo is available now on Steam.
