A frantic late-night phone
message from your brother. A creepy location rife with ghosts. An
old and deadly mystery that must be solved. Hey, what’s not to like?

Dark Fall is a garage
game and a haunted house game and a first person game, and as I’m
a fan of all three you’d think this was an adventure game tailor-made
for me.

It’s not that the setup
is particularly original. In fact, the beginning of the game is virtually
identical to that in Amber:
Journeys Beyond, Inherent
Evil: The Haunted Hotel and Realms
of the Haunting. But who cares? A scary haunted hotel is a
scary haunted hotel.

It
seems your brother was part of a team of ghost hunters. He’s hit upon
a snag and needs your help. And so off you go . . . after all, he
IS your brother, right?

From the very beginning
Dark Fall creates a chilly, spooky atmosphere. It takes place
in a closed hotel that served a now-defunct rail station. The whole
idea of a “ghost” station is a delicious one, and it provides
a perfect setting for what follows.

Jonathan Boakes, the man
behind XXv Productions and the creator of the game, is an obvious
fan of classic first-person point-and-click adventures. He has meticulously
crafted the elements of Dark Fall in a way that does homage
to everything from The
7th Guest to Myst
to the above-mentioned Amber.

As you explore the hotel,
you begin to get to know the various inhabitants, both guests and
staff. It seems that a couple of members of the hotel owners’ family
made a curious discovery underneath the hotel, and you begin to understand
that they unwittingly unleashed a very dark presence.

As in Amber, the
previous team of ghost-busters left lots of interesting equipment
behind. As you progress through the game, you’ll learn how to use
this equipment and access information through it. It also records
some very creepy stuff!

As
in most adventures of this type, the game environment gradually expands
as you gain access to new areas. However, the initial explorable area
in the game is quite generous. But there are those locked rooms .
. . and the more you play, the more you’ll have to know what’s . .
. behind . . . those . . . doors! In fact, the unity of the game’s
environment allows Dark Fall to achieve the seemingly contradictory
effect of a) having lots of spaces to explore and b) being troublingly
claustrophobic. You know you’re not leaving this place until you get
to the bottom of the mystery.

Let me say right here that
this is not a game for the casual adventurer. The abandoned hotel
and train station has many dark secrets, but it doesn’t give them
up easily. This game has very little to do with the anemic recent
first-person adventures like The
Mystery of the Nautilus and The
Cameron Files. Dark Fall requires to you pay close
attention, read, make careful observations, and use your imagination
to connect the dots.

The game is full of scary
moments, though many of them are reserved for the careful observer.
There’s a beautiful moment when a ghost train whizzes by, its lights
illuminating the shades of the window you’re looking at. Then there’s
the shadow that’s briefly revealed by a flickering light in a bathroom
. . . a very elegant and truly scary effect. And there’s an optional
interactive Ouija board sequence that is simply hair-raising.

Dark Fall has lots
of puzzles in various forms. There are many combinations, passwords,
and other “keys” that must be ascertained by massaging the
various bits of information you uncover while poking around the hotel.
Plus there are the actual keys to locked doors that you must find.
Plus jigsaws, inventory puzzles, and more. It will come as a relief
to some gamers that there are no sliders or mazes, however.

I
have but one criticism of the game, though it’s a fairly serious one.
The story contains so much information, both text and visual elements,
that it’s a real shame that you can’t collect all of it in some kind
of notebook or journal. Most of the letters, bills, charts, and other
sources of clues cannot be placed into inventory. This forces the
player to do one of three things: Create multiple saves to use to
access the information later, take copious notes, or do an enormous
amount of backtracking. Since none of these choices exactly enhance
gameplay, it’s a drag in an otherwise sterling game experience.

And let me be very clear.
If I haven’t adequately made the point yet, this is one scary-ass
game. Turn the lights out. Turn the volume up. And prepare to enjoy
getting the willies scared out of you!

It seems to me that Mr.
Boakes set out to make an adventure game like one he’d like to play
himself. And by careful attention to detail, excellent craftsmanship
and good writing, he’s managed to create a game that we want to play,
too. He proves, as good garage games do, that it doesn’t take big
bucks to make a good adventure game. It just takes little things like
artistry, creativity and diligence. Dark Fall is the best independent
adventure game since Cracking the Conspiracy. Go buy it immediately
– we want this guy to be at work on his next game already.

Final Grade: A

System Requirements:

Pentium 233 minimum or
equivalent
32Mb Ram (64 recommended)
24 x CD ROM (or PC DVD)
SVGA capable graphics adapter
32 bit color at 640×480
Mouse
Keyboard
Speakers

This
review is copyright Ray Ivey and Just Adventure and
may not be republished elsewhere without the express written consent
of the author. Republication of said review must also contain a link
back to Just Adventure.