Even though every level has a timer, you can take monsters out the slow way if need be, balling them up one by one. The best strategy becomes getting to a part of the level where you can toss this ball for maximum devastation, some stages conducive with sloped ramp or multi tiered designs but others have little ball traps or walls that will prevent you from getting to certain monsters unless you can bait them away from their safe spots. However, if you do toss this big orange ball before it dies down, you’ve essentially unleashed one big bowling ball that not only kills the creature inside it, but any other monsters it hits as it rolls around the tiny level. The gravedigger can then pick up this unusual orb and carry it around for a while, but if you aren’t quick to use it or don’t lay on enough fire on a monster building up to it, the flames will die down and the monster can revert back to their freely moving form.

These flames don’t immolate the undead on contact, the player instead needing to stun them with the first flame and then pile on more and more fire until the monster is so overwhelmed by the flames they are converted into a giant orange ball. The gravedigger’s only tool for combat is a little lantern that he can use to hurl small flames a little bit in front of him. However, the platform layout isn’t just to make you jump around as you go about destroying the undead creatures, as it plays a vital role in exactly how you can wipe the creatures out. Any drops at the bottom will have the player or monsters who fall into them appear at the top of the screen, so the only thing you need to worry about while playing is the layout of the stage and where the monsters are standing on the floating level geometry.

Two players can play simultaneously, both playing as the somewhat pokey gravedigger in 2D single screen platforming stages. Rather than panicking the populace of the nearby village, the gravedigger sets out to deal with the problem himself, coming across all sorts of ghouls, monsters, and undead creatures who attack him on his path to find the grave robber.

Nightmare in the Dark begins with a gravedigger coming across ransacked graves. It not only nails the horror aesthetic players would be looking for, but it brings a very different style of play than other games within the niche, even if the gameplay seems to be heavily inspired by the game Snow Bros. When discussions about horror-themed arcade games you can play around Halloween crop up, The House of the Dead and Splatterhouse tend to be the names that come up, but I believe SNK’s Nightmare in the Dark deserves just as much attention for that particular niche.

Nightmare in the dark game