Solving the Lost Puzzle - Part 2

by Scott Lewis

Welcome to part 2 of our continuing quest for the modern puzzle game. Last week we started with NiBiRu, by The Adventure Company. This week, we fire up another Adventure Company offering in Dark Fall and check up on NiBiRu to see if Prague has served up any delicious puzzly goodness.

Darkfall concerns the exploration of an abandoned train station. This is a good sign, as lone explorer of mysterious site is a staple of the true puzzle game. On a less inspiring note, the game promises "ghost hunting gadgets," promising more adventure game style item manipulation than we would like (and possibly some arcade style content? Doubtful, but we shall see.)

The first few hours for Darkfall offer up quite a bit of promise. The game has a feel somewhere between classic puzzle games and the very old first person adventure game. First person perspective gives rise to some of the game's problems. You move on what is essentially a large grid of squares, meaning that you often move right past things you're trying to get closer to. Your progress down a hallway is always going to be step forward, turn left, look, turn right, look, so that you don't miss anything that you couldn't see from the forward facing perspective. We also had some problems figuring out where we could and could not click to do things. In many cases this actually adds to the feeling of exploring, forcing whoever's at the keyboard to poke around in all of the dark corners.

Speaking of dark corners, Darkfall does an excellent job of creating atmosphere. The dark even when lit rooms, creepy shadows and antiquated furnishings create a visual environment that is at once surreal and believable. The soundtrack is equally wonderful, with well executed monster in the hallway noises and some great voice work from various spirits inhabiting the station and hotel. The disconnected spirit is also a great mechanic for getting other characters in while keeping the game from degenerating into conversational interaction.

We did have one slight problem with the setting, stemming from the darkness. When you click on something on a desk, the game blows up an image of it so you can examine/read/manipulate. The problem arose when we were playing the game in the middle of the night with the lights off, something I wholeheartedly recommend. Whenever someone would click a document on white paper the screen would go from dark spooky room to incandescent light source, momentarily blinding everyone playing along. This was funny the first few times. After that, we fell into a rhythm of "paper" look down, click, and look up. It's a strange characteristic of this sort of game that everyone is perfectly willing to put up with things that would normally damage the experience in the name of deeper immersion and finally getting to solve puzzles.

Darkfall does a good job of integrating the puzzle content. One of the more fascinating aspects of the game is that there are quite a few objects you can manipulate that don't have an immediate function. Seeing things and learning things that don't immediately open a door or get you an item are important, or at least are made to see that way. Darkfall is drawing us in; making us want to learn what happened in the old hotel and discover all of the secrets of its residents. On top of that, it's presented us with two discrete puzzles, one of which spans across a rather complicated hotel room. This game might just be the one.

In contrast to the joy we're finding with Darkfall, NiBiRu continues to be an excellent game that wholly disappoints us. We've almost left the game's first major area now and haven't seen anything that even resembles a puzzle yet. Click everything with everything still rules the day and has only once failed us for any length of time. The backgrounds and settings remain beautiful, creating some anticipation of the forthcoming Mayan ruins areas, but the game is almost more like watching a jerky stop motion movie than anything in which you're expected to provide meaningful input. Next week we forge ahead in these two games, along with taking a troll through the Internet looking for another. We'll also get into a couple of the puzzles in Darkfall as examples of what puzzles in games can (and should) be.