Dap Review

Dap Dap

Victoria’s eucalypt and wattle ecosystems go through fascinating cycles of destruction and regeneration. For Victoria’s eucalypts and wattles to flourish—the two trees which form the bedrock of its forests—they must regularly pass through the cleansing flame of bushfires, having evolved in a symbiotic relationship with human beings in the most apocalyptic human transformation of the environment until the post-war industrial revolution. Of course, if these fires are too great, they can, in fact, devastate the landscape, transforming these forests into blackened wastelands which take decades to recover, not fertile soil from which the forest will flower into something even greater.

It is this cycle which gives to Dap a stronger sense of place than it might have otherwise had. Made in Melbourne, the rich, swamp-like environment Dap explores is like glimpsing into a miniscule cross-section of the thick herbage along the Merri Creek or Yarra River, and allowing one’s imagination to populate the moist undergrowth with spirits. Or perhaps it is more like a half-dreamt memory of the Victorian countryside when it was verdant swampland, not rapidly depleted pasturage, its spirits living on.

The titular daps themselves are creatures reminiscent of the irreverent spirits of the forest in Princess Mononoke. The player takes on the role of one of these creatures, acting as a leader of Daps on a quest to save the forest from some unknown corruption. Not unlike Abe and the Mudokon’s in Oddworld, Dap must recruit other Daps (attracting them from their pollen state to float down to join it in chatting around a bonfire) to help it in this quest, while also trying to rescue as many of them as possible; keeping them alive until the end of the level where they are teleported to another dimension. In this strange dimension Dap tends to a garden, which will perhaps serve as the basis of the forest’s rebirth. The spirits of the rescued daps give to the trees Dap grows nourishment.

The seeds for these trees are hidden throughout the levels, and finding them requires careful exploration; which is easier said than done. As beautiful as the world which Dap inhabits is, it is equally terrifying. The peaceful blue and green palette for the uncorrupted parts of the forest is twisted into manic, hazy reds, oranges and purples; a bonfire offering the only refuge to Dap from the corruption. But these bonfires may only be lit on dry ground and the world of Dap is dank and damp. Lighting a fire also requires the precious flammable pulp of corrupted plants. Additionally, bonfires are useful for crafting health potions, which are made with the mushrooms Dap collects. The multifarious uses of bonfires and the scarcity of dry ground and (sometimes) fuel makes for some nerve-wracking moments.

The corrupted spirits and creatures inhabiting the dense swampland of Dap can be terrifying. There are dark daps, bats, sentinels, suicide bombers, glittering jellyfish which on death release thirsty leeches in an explosion of blood and light, and even giants; among other monstrosities. Combat is a terrifying technicolour extravaganza of sensory overload, with glowing projectiles flying across the screen and lighting dark patches of vegetation otherwise shrouded in darkness or, most intensely, through corrupted areas draped in a foggy haze of toxic spores, pollen and pollution.

The actual mechanics are simple, but satisfyingly challenging. Dap may dash to avoid enemies, and has rudimentary melee attacks, but it is the projectiles that are the blood and splatter of combat. Starting with a single homing attack, the projectile attacks gradually evolve first into an automatic burst of projectiles which must be charged up before firing (but cannot be left charged, lest it kills Dap’s comrades; resulting in a tense, rhythmic balancing act of charging yet not killing one’s own daps in preparation for the onslaught of enemies) that grows more powerful the more daps Dap has recruited—each Dap providing a single projectile to Dap’s magazine—then, eventually, into Dap using its fellow-daps as suicide bombers, doing the most damage; but at the greatest cost.

By the end of Dap, exploring corrupted areas means also avoiding rampant infestations, with the density of the violence exploding into snippets of shmup-like beauty as blood and fulminous projectiles glitter and clatter through the rainy haze of corruption.

Darkness plays an important role, too; with the light of bonfires repelling enemies and corruption alike, and the lighting of lamps or torches also keeping Dap safe from the dangers lurking in the darkness, making the important work of searching for seeds or switches to open doors at times truly terrifying. These locked doors may require a certain number of daps to be opened, or specific lamps to be turned on—or opaque interactions with aspects of the forest to make a previously impenetrable cobweb penetrable; or the sacrifice of a Dap to blow up a skeletal barrier.

This opaqueness in gameplay is consistent with the abstruseness of the narrative, and lends it a fascinating ambiguity. Throughout the narrative Dap has snippets of conversations with spirits, corrupted and uncorrupted alike, as well as what may be the source of the corruption itself. Outside of the danger Dap faces at the hands of the corruption, it is not even clear if the corruption is an unnecessary evil that ought to be stopped, or a necessary part of the cycle of the forest’s growth—as fire is in the Victorian ecosystem.

The aesthetic of the creatures depicted is a wonderful collage of styles, ranging the gamut from the obvious influence of Miyazaki’s whimsy to the pagan iconography of a heavy metal album cover—even the environment Dap navigates is a strange mixture of lush vegetation and a style of shading with a fluorescent blue and green colour palette that brings to mind the patterns and colours of computer circuitry and science fiction motifs of 2000s cinema.

Yet throughout it all, there is a consistent peacefulness to the vegetation, even where it has grown out of corruption; only fire disturbs this peacefulness, and there may be as much reason to believe that it is a regenerative fire as to believe it is a destructive one—of course, the two in the right environment are one and the same. But nowhere is more peaceful than the surreally computery hub world in which Dap and the daps Dap rescue reside (having ascended as pixels from the forest to this digital heaven). Out of this plastic and metal grows Dap’s garden, much to the delight of the corrupted spirits that Dap has redeemed.

This sense of peace gives to Dap a strange tenderness—even in the face of futility; perhaps growing this garden is folly, for maybe it will simply be consumed by corruption and fire only to grow again, but even in planting something which will inevitably be destroyed, Dap is giving to the world a moment of peace, even if it is only a moment—even if it is at the cost of others, and will itself perhaps lead towards calamity, just as the deadwood of healthy eucalypts and wattles is the fuel for their own destruction.

There is a brief moment in which Dap talks to other daps who have, in the face of the corruption, managed to find something of their own to hold on to: useful resources to Dap, such as mushrooms and flammable crops. In collecting these resources to fight the corruption, Dap is itself destroying the peace of others who have found a way to live on.

Such ambiguities and contrasts give to Dap a powerful richness of character which permeates its narrative, aesthetic and gameplay alike.