Black the Fall (2017)

I love dystopian atmospheres. It’s not to say all are done flawlessly, but I’m instinctively pulled towards them. Such was the case with Black the Fall, an indie I had heard very little about but caught my eye due to its looks alone. Seemingly heavily inspired by the tone of games like Limbo and especially Inside, this is a puzzle platformer that features a striking, stylised, oppressive noir art style that is perfectly fitting for its overarching theme, a prisoner in communist Soviet Union trying to escape its bleak fate of servitude.

One of the most interesting things about Black the Fall is how it uses colours to guide your playthrough. In particular, red and yellow are the colours to respect here, as everything is informed by them, animated by them, responds to them. As you carry on, you quickly realise that red equals danger, and equally quickly learn to avoid it. Simultaneously, you also realise yellow equals interactivity, and the 2D side-scrolling nature of the game makes this colour coding play really nicely with the puzzles. Speaking of puzzles, I really liked their design. A few do come across as a bit obtuse, and a few others could do with more mechanical polish in its mechanics, because without it they’re a pain to get right positionally. But the vast majority of them are well-executed, different from a lot of what we see in the genre, and most importantly when it comes to puzzles, rewarding to solve, even if at times quite challenging (at least to me). As expected, the story is mostly told through the environment, but from start to finish, the game does a great job of conveying the grit and relentless determination a person can experience when exposed to a desperate situation. Alongside all this, Black the Fall features a fantastic checkpoint system that almost never wastes the player’s time due to how well these are placed, adding a really satisfying flow to the entire playthrough.

So all in all, this was a pretty enjoyable puzzle-platforming experience that was different enough to stand out. Black the Fall might have added a bleak tone to the finish line of my gaming year, but it did so in a commendable way despite its noticeably limited budget and flaws. It would be nice to see it garnering a bit more recognition for what it did right. 7.5/10

I'm really angry at this game as it has so much wasted potential and ends up rather bad.

This game in ambition aspires to the likes of Inside or Limbo. But sadly does not achieve a similar level of execution but if want a short what kind of game it is - it tries to be that.

So what's wrong? A lot so I'll go with what's right. And what's right is that audio is generally fine and some of the visuals are really good.

So now onto what's what doesn't work. First up story - a standard dark dystopia world and you - a cog in a machine trying to break out from this terrible place. And it would be fine if it stayed a fantasy dystopia - but it both is and isn't. The evil oppressor is the communism with it's hammer and sickle and actual Stalin portraits hanging around. With the level of technology and characters it makes really little sense. Riding stationary bikes for power while big robots patrol the factories - it just doesn't add up. Even more it tries to I believe relate loosely to Romanian resist against communism which makes it a rather weird mixture of fantasy and real.

The visuals are both cool and terrible. Levels are uneven - some look really nice, some are terrible. It's all pretty dark and at least for me the brightness slider seemed to do nothing. I'll admit that open spaces are generally better looking than the smaller areas which generally look bland, dark and ugly. Even worse some platforming areas are so dark you can't see holes.

The controls and mechanics of the game are probably the weakest part of the game. They even fail at tutorial. Apart from interacting with environment by pressing buttons and whatnot you also get a basically laser pointer with you can control "brainwashed" zombie workers and other contraptions. So first time this is introduced is simple you point at a zombie and tell him to press a switch - simple and makes sense. Next screen - you are thought that if you point the pointer through a watch light you will be spotted and shot. So what's wrong? Well you have a zombie to point and a switch on the other side of the spotlight - you can't just point the zombie at switch and you're seemingly stuck with no obvious clue to what's next. What you need to do is point the zombie to walk into the search light - once that is done the searchlight will escort the zombie to the button and make it press it - how the hell was that a logical outcome?

The above example illustrates what's worst with the game. There's just plenty of one time mechanics that are never explained and are up to you to guess that at this particular spot you can do this particular thing. Mixed with a bit of sluggish controls I had an urge to punch the monitor more than once.

Overall such a wasted potential. It could have been a great game - instead it's just too frustrating to recommend. And I would really suggest not picking up just after playing Inside. If you're really itching for similar game play - then perhaps but it's not near as good.