Darklings revives the gesture-based gaming genre in this haunting game for iOS where you must save the world from total darkness.

Welcome to the darkness

Strange creatures, called Darklings, have taken all the light from the planet. You control Lum, a little creature on a mission to defeat the Darklings and return light to the world. Each of the monsters are fairly difficult to see; the only part of them that is totally visible is a symbol on the top of their head.

Lum can capture the Darklings by drawing the symbol which transforms him into an illuminated version of the monster and knocks any nearby monster backwards. You have to be careful though, because Lum will instantly die if a Darkling touches him. 

In each level, the luminous hero faces a few waves of Darklings that progressively come in greater numbers. There is also a time limit in each level that is extended by collecting stars from the fallen Darklings.

As each stage becomes more difficult, it becomes a frenzied balance of defeating Darklings and collecting stars. 

Darklings also has unlockables such as extra outfits for Lum and Darkling models to collect. 

Draw to live

Essentially Darklings comes down to your ability to draw symbols as fast as possible. As mentioned, each one of the monsters has a symbol on their head. To capture that demon, draw the shape on screen with your finger. When there are lots of monsters on screen, it becomes quite difficult to draw all the shapes. 

As you capture more monsters in Darklings, their souls (represented by stars) float into the air and you must capture them to earn more time. This is a surprisingly difficult task because sometimes you'll accidentally draw shapes which sends Lum to a different part of the screen instead of capturing stars. Other times you'll accidentally knock the stars aside when drawing or trying to capture them. 

Tim Burton and Danny Elfman would approve

The best part about Darklings is the design. Instead of using bright colors, Darklings sticks to a pallet that features many shades of white, grey, and black. All the characters and set pieces are layered on top of one another, giving Darklings an almost 3D feel.

This works in the game's favor and it resembles darker children's films such as The Nightmare Before Christmas or Coraline. 

It also has a haunting yet magical soundtrack that features deep, bassy tones as well as instruments like violins. The music falls perfectly in line with the game and sounds like something straight out of a Tim Burton movie.

Shine a light and save the world

Darklings has gorgeous design mixed with simple, yet clever gameplay. It's strangely addictive and well worth a download.