Dark Meadow preview and a chance to win a Transformer Prime!

Early this week I got a message from NVIDIA asking me to review their next flagship game for TegraZone. I’m a huge gaming fan, so I jumped at the opportunity to check out their latest title. To my surprise, I got an early copy of Dark Meadow: The Pact from Phosphor Game Studio. Read on for the full details and a chance to win an ASUS Transformer Prime.

I was asked to do a full review of Dark Meadow, but I’ve only had the game for 24 hours so consider this more of a preview. Having said that, Dark Meadow has started off as the best Android game I have ever played.

Dark Meadow begins when you wake up in an abandoned hospital. Very little details about the story are provided at the start, and the chronicle slowly unfolds as you begin to explore and pick up clues. I don’t want to give away the adventure, but you soon realize that you are trapped in a nightmare and you must escape the hospital to wake up.

Gameplay is a mix of exploring, mystery, and combat that features swipe gestures. Players are rewarded for closely examining every detail as they collect coins to upgrade their weapons and find clues that tell the story.

When a battle occurs, players start with a cross bow for long-range combat and switch to a sword as melee attacks as the enemy draws near. If you face an enemy and lose all your life, you awaken in the maternity ward of the hospital.

Check out the video above for a more detailed walkthrough of the game. As an experiment, I recorded my preview video using the Tegra 3-powered HTC One X, which is one of the devices that can play this game. For some reason the video abruptly cuts off, but I thought it was a good cliffhanger that would lead you to wanting more.

Overall, Dark Meadow has been a joy to play and I can’t find any faults with it yet. It has the potential to score a perfect review when I’m finished playing it. I joked in the video that Dark Meadow is like a good book that you don’t want to put down, and now I’m finding myself wanting to go play more after I get this post up.

Initially, Dark Meadow: The Pact for Android is exclusive to Tegra 3 devices. The game was previously released on iOS, but Phosphor Games has made a number of improvements for the Tegra version.

Dark Meadow Tegra 3 Enhancements include:

Dynamic particles – All the scenes come alive, with rendering power to draw more particle systems.Dynamic foliage- Scenes have foliage that moves and swaysDynamic textures – Extra visual fidelity like animating environmental textures like puddles and drips.More detailed world – More polygons on screen

To celebrate the release of Dark Meadow, NVIDIA and Android and Me are giving away one ASUS Transformer Prime tablet and dock.

How to enter: Join Android and Me and start a discussion about any topic in our Threads. All Thread creators in the next 48 hours will be automatically entered to win. (Learn more about Threads)Who is eligible: This contest is open to residents of the United States and CanadaWinner: Coming soon! We will announce the lucky winner this weekend.

Right now Threads can only be created by users with 100+ points, but we are working to remove that restriction soon so that more people can enter.