DarkSwitch on Steam - User reviews, Price & Information
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DarkSwitch is a vertical survival city builder. Build a city on a great tree and defend it against the Fog. Face the challenges of limited real estate, scarce resources, and tough moral choices as you seek to uncover the mystery of the Shroud. The Tree Provides! The Tree Protects! The Tree Prevails!
DarkSwitch is a city builder, colony sim and survival game
developed by Cyber Temple
and published by Cyber Temple Games LLC.
Released on April 09th 2026 is available only on Windows
in 6 languages: English, German, Polish, Russian, Simplified Chinese and French.
It has received 308 reviews of which 226 were positive and 82 were negative resulting in a rating of 6.9 out of 10. 😐
The game is currently priced at 26.99€ on Steam with a 10% discount, but you can find it for 11.56€ on Gamivo.
The Steam community has classified DarkSwitch into these genres:
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System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS: Windows 10/11 (64-bit)
- Processor: Intel Core i5-11400 / AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2060 / AMD Radeon RX 6600 (6+ ГБ VRAM)
- DirectX: Version 12
- Storage: 30 GB available space
- Additional Notes: SSD Required
User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Okay, I have beaten the game, and here is my review. The good, the bad and the less than ideal. Potential minor spoilers. First off the good stuff! - I enjoy the theme! It's engaging and has a ton of potential! - Branching stories, the game presents several choices that affect your ending. - BEAUTIFUL game, I honestly think the main map, and the world map looks awesome! - Active developer, who is working to fix the game! - Some people will hate the voice-over, as it can be jarring at times, but honestly I don't mind. It's nice that it's not just text and it moves the story along. - Love the building on the tree, I honestly wish they would expand it even more! Either expand it further or add more risk/reward for building on the "safe" tree vs the ground. The bad stuff... - There still are a lot of bugs that need to be sorted out. Even basic stuff -- Units not moving, I had an airship getting stuck on the world map, it stayed stuck for the rest of the game. -- I rarely paid attention to my individual people, but I've heard they can get stuck as well. - Combat needs work -- Combat doesn't feel that engaging. It's mostly click, send squad, leave, or pointing a big laser at spirits that units can't hurt. Some of the monsters don't even have proper animations (or they simply bugged out?). I wish there was more depth, as I ended up placing towers at each production hub and rarely had to think about combat at all. - The overworld map seems nice, but it more or less invalidates the need for the local scout squads. Lategame you can have 3 squads, I never felt like I needed more than 2 (often 1 was plenty). Ships feel strictly like a better version of the scouts, more loot, more impact, and more meaningful events. Making the squard only useful for defense. - Don't get why we weren't just humans? I guess the "live in a big tree" means elves, but honestly I just ignored it. The Ugly: -Pacing is not the best, you go from a few quest, to drowning, to none..? -- I ended up spending a lot of time just waiting for the next event, and even bugged some because I had cleared an objective before a quest popped up to do it. Nothing that can't be solved with a few adjustments. -- I also got quest to do something for X time, but the total quest length was shorter than the time needed to complete it (making it an auto fail). - Give me more people! -- I only used 30% of the main map to beat the game, and it's not because I didn't want to expand or defend it, I simply didn't have the people to expand. Even after I had rescued every single villager I could find! (I may have encountered a bug, early game events that rewarded people simply stopped appearing at some point.) - The shift in characters. -- This one is tricky, because it's more about the writing. But our main cast changes personalities across the game. From being an adventurous captain (pirate/rogue), who would do anything for her goals, to suddenly becoming a peace-focused main character..? They already had better options setup for that role, so it just felt very odd to me. It might be because my stories got mixed into each other (see next point), but it was a very quick shift without any event, I felt warranted a change of heart. - The questlines ran on top of each other..? -- I ended with some weird and hilarious outcomes, because of the overlapping questlines. I ended in war vs a faction that adored me, while their leader was dead? I don't think this was inteded, but it was hilarious! A potential fix could be to have more triggers that block or delay conflicting events. Final Verdict: Did I enjoy this game - YES even though it can be buggy, I believe this will get sorted out relatively quickly. Would I play it a ton? - No, once you have cleared the different stories it's sort of over. But it's enjoyable while it last. I believe it's important to focus on something to end, rather than push for infinite gametime. In the current state I would give it a 7/10 - once the worst bugs have been sorted out it's a solid 8/10. Not perfect but certainly not bad. Worth the money in my opinion. Who should buy it: -City managers + story-rich players, just remember in the current stage, you cannot create mega cities (due to limited population). Who should wait: -People who cannot handle bugs - come back in a few months. -People who wish to min-max their entire settlement - I believe you would find the lack of agency for the villagers annoying in the current stage. Hope this helps!
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I recommend it - I requested a refund. This is a really tough game to pin down. I think my conflicted thoughts on DarkSwitch are evident enough in my reviewing it positively, but ultimately preferring to have my money and time back. There's a lot of good here, and I think if you're super into Frostpunk for the city & resource management aspects alone, you'll probably get a lot out of this game. I bought this because I absolutely love Frostpunk 1, and really hoped this would capture some of that same magic, but for me, it just doesn't. The resource management, strategic city building, and tech trees all seem well fleshed-out to me. I think if you're a number cruncher, there will be plenty here for you to chew on (although some more hotkeys certainly wouldn't go amiss). However, this game made me realise how much of my appreciation of Frostpunk is wrapped up in all the elements outside of the management sim; the story, the oppressive atmosphere, the designs of the art and sound, and the absolutely stellar soundtrack. DarkSwitch unfortunately just doesn't hold a candle to it in these regards. I probably should've been able to guess this given such a generic and non-descript title as "DarkSwitch", but the world and the setting are painfully shallow fantasy slop. It reads like teenager's attempt to capture Tolkien, with pointy-eared humanoid "Arelians" (who seriously, definitely aren't elves, guys) from "Nelaai" or "Elaran" bandying about ridiculous terms like "ethnarc", and using mystical "solar" (pronounced sol-AAR) to fight "guzzles"... I mean for godsake, an evil religious order called the Illuminarchy shows up in the first couple of days. The seriously amateur writing is not helped in the slightest by the character interactions all being voice acted in some of the worst ESL readings out there. The game looks nice enough, but you won't find that strong sense of atmospheric dread which hangs over you from day dot in Frostpunk, despite the story attempting to set up similar stakes. The music, similarly, is just fine, but lacks a powerful identity and ultimately ends up becoming annoying and sometimes overbearing. Ultimately, I think the strategic city builder and resource management side of this game has a really strong foundation, and if that's all you care about, you should give this game a go. I would love this to be a success story, so I'm comfortable giving DarkSwitch a recommendation. The surrounding artistic elements sadly do not sell me, and unfortunately that's what I would need to remain invested in the world and gameplay, so it's just not for me.
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Haven't played far enough to judge everything, but so far I had five hours of fun. I write this, because I think this game deserves attention. If you like colony building in Frostpunk style, this game might make you very happy. Resource management is critical and the production chains and buildings seem well structured. It could definitely benefit from some more polish (see other reviews), but has run completely stable and I didn't encounter any bugs.
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It’s a pretty interesting game, reminiscent of Frostpunk. As usual, it’s all about making tough decisions, and your most important resource is, of course, your people. As usual, everyone’s against you—everyone’s out to screw you over. But I’d like to see even more research and production branches, and more complex chains. Although it might not be obvious in the first hour, you have to keep playing to find out. So far, it’s pretty interesting.
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If you liked Frostpunk you will like this game, they're incredibly similar. The gameplay is pretty much what I expected, there's some jank when it comes to cutscenes and cinematics, and it's not amazingly optimized so its a little sluggish when loading some things even on the lowest settings. Not the worst launch state I've seen for a game tbh My main gripe is the audio is really, really bad. Most of the voice acting is okay, some of it is pretty rough. The pacing of delivery is pretty robotic all around, and the written dialogue isn't great. The background music was the most painful, and it was put to mute immediately, and the sound effects for a lot of stuff was just pretty painful too. Considering the game is aiming at an immersive darker theme, it really struggles to connect because of this issue for me. Probably a fun game if you just play on mute.
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Frequently Asked Questions
DarkSwitch is currently priced at 26.99€ on Steam.
DarkSwitch is currently available at a 10% discount. You can purchase it for 26.99€ on Steam.
DarkSwitch received 226 positive votes out of a total of 308 achieving a rating of 6.92.
😐
DarkSwitch was developed by Cyber Temple and published by Cyber Temple Games LLC.
DarkSwitch is playable and fully supported on Windows.
DarkSwitch is not playable on MacOS.
DarkSwitch is not playable on Linux.
DarkSwitch is a single-player game.
There is a DLC available for DarkSwitch. Explore additional content available for DarkSwitch on Steam.
DarkSwitch does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
DarkSwitch does not support Steam Remote Play.
DarkSwitch is enabled for Steam Family Sharing. This means you can share the game with authorized users from your Steam Library, allowing them to play it on their own accounts. For more details on how the feature works, you can read the original Steam Family Sharing announcement or visit the Steam Family Sharing user guide and FAQ page.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for DarkSwitch.
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Additionally, we incorporate data from the SteamSpy API, which offers insights into game sales and player statistics. This helps us present a comprehensive view of each game's popularity and performance within the gaming community.
Last Updates| Steam data | 16 April 2026 22:05 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 16 April 2026 13:06 |
| Steam price | 16 April 2026 21:02 |
| Steam reviews | 16 April 2026 15:45 |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about DarkSwitch, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about DarkSwitch
- SteamCharts - Analysis of DarkSwitch concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck DarkSwitch compatibility
Game modes
Features
Developer
Cyber Temple
Publisher
Cyber Temple Games LLC
Release
09 Apr 2026
Platforms
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