Dark Fall: Lost Souls

Dark Fall: Lost Souls
Developer(s)	Darkling Room
Publisher(s)	Iceberg Interactive
Designer(s)	Jonathan Boakes
Engine	Wintermute Engine[1]
Platform(s)	Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	WW 13 November 2009 (download)[2] NA 21 April 2010 (retail)[3] EU 29 January 2010 (retail)[3]
Genre(s)	First-person adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player
Distribution	DVD, digital distribution

Dark Fall: Lost Souls is a 2009 first-person horror/adventure game developed by Darkling Room and published by Iceberg Interactive for Microsoft Windows. It is the third game in the Dark Fall series, following the 2002 game Dark Fall and the 2004 game Dark Fall II: Lights Out.

Gameplay

Lost Souls uses a simple point-and-click interface to move the player around and manipulate the environment. Contrary to a lot of modern adventure games, but similar to the first two installments, Lost Souls does not keep note of any information or clues to puzzles that the player comes across during the game, effectively forcing the player to keep track of every puzzle or detail themselves.

Plot

The game is set in the Dowerton Train Station and Hotel from the first Dark Fall game. Several years have passed, and the location has fallen into an advanced state of disrepair. The protagonist of the game is "The Inspector", an unnamed disgraced police officer who was dismissed from the force after tampering with evidence in the case of a missing child, Amy Haven, who disappeared the day she was expelled from school on her eleventh birthday. Amy's family blamed The Inspector for failing to find her, as he planted all evidence related to the chief suspect, Mr. Bones, who was subsequently released without charge. The case never left The Inspector's mind however, and now, five years later, his search for Amy has led him to Dowerton Station, after several local teenagers have reported seeing her in the vicinity, watching them from the forest surrounding the platform and hotel.

The game begins in a train tunnel as The Inspector receives a mysterious text message from "Echo" telling him "You are not alone. I am near." The Inspector finds a note written by Mr. Bones saying he wishes he knew where Amy was as she was his only friend. As he explores the tunnel, he thinks he hears a train coming, despite the tunnel being blocked off for many years. He panics, blacks out and awakens near the Dowerton train station. Another text message tells him "Do you remember this place? Think hard?" He enters the station and sees the ghost of both the station master and, subsequently, Amy herself. He then gets a phone call from Amy, who asks him to come to her birthday party on the top floor of the hotel, as all of her "sisters" will be there. The Inspector is confused by this, because Amy was an only child.

The player encounters Amy in the Dowerton Hotel.

As he explores the station, he finds various newspaper clippings which reveal that teen crime in the area is at an all time high, with teenagers practising satanic rituals ever since Amy disappeared, claiming that they are doing it at her command. Everyone in the town is afraid. Amy herself was expelled from school for her mood swings and unhealthy interest in the occult. The Inspector also finds a letter that indicates Amy and Mr. Bones were communicating with the dead – called "The Forgotten". The Inspector gains entry to the hotel, where he discovers his own name in the guestbook, accompanied by a note saying that he would be staying for "a very long time."

As he explores the hotel, he sees a strange creature crawl out from the floor and attempt to attack him. He escapes and then sees his own interrogation of Bones playing on a TV. During the interrogation, Bones says that Amy is in a better place, that she wanted to go there, and she is with her "angels" now. The Inspector encounters several more creatures, continues to get text messages, and continues to hear Amy talking to him. He also begins to find pages of the Book of The Dark Fall and entries from journals from Saint Swithin's School for Girls, the school from which Amy was expelled. It soon becomes apparent that the text messages from Echo are actually serving as a guide for the Inspector, pointing him in the right direction.

He learns that a new guest has arrived at the hotel, Gloria Grable (a character from the first Dark Fall game). When the Inspector enters Gloria's room, the game returns to 1947. Gloria is hiding out after robbing the Bank of Britain. She decides to hide the stolen money under the floorboards, and the game jumps back to the present day. The Inspector finds her suitcase and learns that she was working for a group called The Agency, who were supposedly working against the Nazis. However, on the day of the robbery, The Agency doublecrossed her, and although she escaped, her boyfriend and partner was killed. Gloria says she is trapped in the hotel because of Amy, and The Inspector helps her escape by convincing her that her life has not been a failure. She then tells him that she is free but warns him that Amy is "darkness itself."

The Inspector then finds a new guest at the hotel – Andrew Verney (another character from the first game). The game cuts back to 1947, with Verney arriving at the hotel and seeing a newspaper report about how Sly Fox (Gloria Grable's thief persona) and her lover successfully robbed the Bank of Britain and exposed The Agency as corrupt. Verney's mother is very sick, and he has been advised to return home, but he doesn't want to as he needs to complete research for an astrology book on which he is working. Verney claims that Amy is keeping him in the hotel, and he confesses that he feels huge guilt for not being with his mother when she died. The Inspector helps Andrew by finishing his research for him, and Verney is able to return home to help his mother recover.

The Inspector then finds a skeleton in a water tower; that of John Lovell, the gardener the school from which Amy was expelled. Lovell is actually Mr. Bones, the chief suspect in the case.

A new guest then arrives at the hotel; Mathilda Fly (also a character from the first game). Fly explains she thought she'd left the hotel long ago, but Amy pulled her back. The Inspector hears about her disastrous performance in the Empire Theatre on the opening night of a major new play. Fly was drunk and got her lines wrong. The performance was so bad that it ruined her subsequent career. The Inspector is able to help her by helping her to remember her lines, and the play is a huge success, with her performance hailed by the critics. She thanks The Inspector, telling him that Amy and her "sisters" are evil, and warning him to "beware the Dark Fall."

It is subsequently revealed that The Inspector himself murdered Mr. Bones, convinced of his guilt, but unable to prove it. Shortly thereafter, Echo reveals that he is actually The Inspector's conscience. The Inspector thinks back to the interrogation of Bones, when he said Amy was with her angels, who came to her "in a dark light." Amy then appears to The Inspector and tells him that she wants to go home, but someone must stay behind in her place to look after her sisters, who are in fact three dolls. The player has the choice remaining behind or not. If the player stays, Amy says "the Dark Fall is now," and The Inspector is consumed by the Darkness as Amy laughs. If the player refuses to stay, The Inspector wakes up on an operating table as a doctor assures him he is going to be okay. In the background, Amy can be heard laughing.

Reception

Reception
Aggregate scores Aggregator Score GameRankings 77.25%[4] Metacritic 75/100[5] Review scores Publication Score GameZone 7.5[6] Game Boomers A-[7] Hooked Gamers 7.5[8] Gamer.nl 7[9] Adventure Classic Gaming [10]
Awards Publication Award Adventure Gamers Best First-Person PC Adventure (2010)[2] Adventure Gamers Best Sound Design (2010)[2]

The game received generally positive reviews. It holds an aggregate score of 75 out of 100 on Metacritic, based on eight reviews,^[5] and 77.25% on GameRankings, also based on eight reviews.^[4] It won "Best First-Person PC Adventure" and "Best Sound Design" in the 2010 Adventure Gamers awards.^[2]

Game Boomers scored it an A-. They felt it wasn't especially scary and that some of the puzzles were repetitive but concluded that "Despite my misgivings and the little quibbles here and there, all in all Dark Fall: Lost Souls is an excellent adventure game, worthy of your time and your money."^[7]

Gamezone scored the game 7.5 out of 10, praising the depth of the story and the detail of the gameworld; "More impressive than the actual story is the way that it's told. Dark Fall‍ '​s creator Jonathan Boakes was able to convey a lot of information using very simple storytelling techniques that fit perfectly within the gloomy world of the game [...] Articles and books you find scattered around the world help fill out the backstory and explain the events around Amy's disappearance. The objects you discover over the course of the game help you understand who once populated the now-abandoned train station and its attached hotel." Although they were critical of the obscurity of some of the puzzle solutions, they concluded that "if a few rough edges and a decidedly old-school game design don't bother you, then Dark Falls: Lost Souls may be a game for you. It can be clunky, slow and frustrating, but offers up some better storytelling than many games with a hundred times the development budget. Sure, its cliché [sic] at times. But it's also genuinely creepy and compelling, and it may make you reconsider playing with the lights off."^[6]

Hooked Gamers also scored it 7.5 out of 10. They were critical of how the plot was implemented; "depending on how you look at it, the plot is either far too linear and simple to be called a mystery puzzle, or there are far too many layers, shadings and ambiguous subplots intertwined in it for you to be able to make any sense of the direction the game is leading you in." However, they praised the voice acting (except the voice of The Inspector), graphics and, especially, the sound design and felt the game had some genuinely shocking moments.^[8]

Adventure Classic Gaming scored it 4 out of 5, with reviewer Patrick Talbot arguing the game to be "amongst the most atmospheric and terrifyingly creepy games I have ever played. The overall atmosphere focuses on the macabre and grotesque imagery that can really make your skin crawl." He praised the graphics, sound design, interface and voice acting (although he criticised the voice of The Inspector). He concluded that "Dark Fall: Lost Souls delivers an unforgettable horror adventure experience. Boakes is clearly passionate about his created world, and his passion shows readily in the game's design, script, sound, and music. The game manages to transport you to places more scary than a ride at an amusement park. Indeed, Dowerton's train station and adjoining hotel will rival any haunted house, real or otherwise."^[10]

References

External links

• Official Site
• Iceberg Interactive