Thoughts on Dark Fall: Lost Souls

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Dark Fall: Lost Souls - Googolplex - 12-07-2013

I want to give a short review on my recently played game, "Dark Fall: Lost Souls". Yes! Have purchased it now and am fascinated.
Perhaps I should mention at first that it was my very first point n click adventure. I normally dislike such types of games, because they're not so much immersive as true 3D adventures. The reason is that I want moving around freely in a game and wouldn't like to click around just with the mouse to the designated directions. But now I had to change my attitude, because this game has me really proved how well this type really works. Of course I still prefer free 3D controlling, because it feels more like to be in middle of a real world and can be attacked by anything at any time, which is in a 2D adventure rather poorly possible to implement.
However, I was extremely positive surprised. Because even though you control it with the mouse, you can very well be immersed in the game world. Because you doesn't simply "jump" from here to there, as in most other classical point n click adventures, but it "moves" there. If you turn around, then the camera really pans around and does not just jump. It's almost like a 3D adventure game, only that it just controls with the mouse.
What has extremely excited me from the beginning is the sound and the atmosphere. I was already used to from games like Amnesia, Penumbra and Silent Hill a lot and so I set my expectations quite high, and this game can really to belong to the three of them!
The locations surpass anything I have ever experienced in horror genre. You have to be sick to create the genius of horror as a developer somehow a bit. What you see in the game gets shocked in some cases even more than the disturbing horror icon "Silent Hill". The different locations are accompanied by at once extremely disturbing and beautiful music and brought in the mood. So comes to a rare genius scary feeling!
The puzzles do not exist simply to use only objects, but you have to search for clues and study them very carefully to get ahead. This resulted so far in some places that I often haphazardly running around through the area, because I did not know what I need to do next. Per SMS you get from someone unknown messages to your mobile phone that sends a coded clues. What confuses me a bit is that later there are things in teh game that were not there before. And so you have to examine specific locations several times. I had to look at not just a few places Lets Plays to get ahead. But tricky puzzles I like very much, because they ensure that I'm dealing with the game world. And this is immersive. Therefore, I can only say that the puzzles are fortunately too hard - but always logical.
The story is consistently mysterious and there is no "happy ending". The whole scenario takes place at a train station (Dowerton). You are Inspector and embarks on a search for a missing girl who how to find out later on which has been caught up in the spell absurd esoterics ...

The game unfortunately can only play in a resolution of 1024 x 768 - missing an option to change the resolution. Nevertheless, the graphics are very impressive due to the sharp textures and lighting effects.

Dark Fall has been developed by only three people and Horror is guaranteed in any case! My play time was approximately 8 hours.

Some pieces of music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVoIk2uA90k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7TPH97OkOY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OwOv0xTIDrU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIxRx0WBNd8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGkKsEl9iNM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kBWiNHHYRcI

Some in-game impressions:

[Image: rucrl3sh.jpg]