 Best
First-Person PC Adventure: Dark Fall: Lost Souls
As a slideshow-style 2D adventure game with limited animation,
Jonathan Boakes’ Dark Fall: Lost Souls relies on its imagination
to scare you... or rather, using your own imagination against
you. Where other horror games bludgeon the player with monsters
and combat or cheap scare tactics, here you’re all alone
with creaking floor boards, tinkling wind chimes, squawking crows
– these little touches are the only signs of life, which
makes it all the more eerie when you starting hearing other…
things. Maybe you aren’t so alone after all? Further exploration
keeps you on edge with a constant reminder that something is very
wrong in the old Dowerton train station and hotel, from the creepy
mannequin pageantry to syringe-stabbed mattresses to actual otherworldly
entities appearing in the dark, often just on the periphery of
view.
That’s
perhaps what makes the game so great as a first-person experience.
Your role may be the anonymous “Inspector”, but the
fear is your fear, the perspective is your perspective. This proves
important, because for all its ghostly inhabitants, Lost Souls
has a very human element as well. Indeed, it’s debatable
which is the more haunted: Dowerton or The Inspector himself.
Of course, there’s much more to a game than being scared,
and this adventure backs up its horror quotient with solid gameplay
and graphic quality that’s much improved (and put to good
use) over the two previous Dark Fall games. At the end of the
day, though, you’ll want to be frightened, and there’s
a reason we called this game “one of the scariest point-and-click
adventures ever”. For that accomplishment, it deserves the
Aggie for this year’s top first-person title.
www.adventuregamers.com
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Best
Sound Design: Dark Fall: Lost Souls
The emphasis on sound effects to enhance a frightening experience
is one of the most important conventions of the horror genre, but
perhaps one of the most underrated. While the impact is often subtle
and difficult to gauge on its own, any door can give you chills
when it swings open into the unknown with a slow, agonizing creak
that dares you to step inside and see what lies in the darkness
beyond. There are lots of doors in Dark Fall: Lost Souls. But it
doesn’t end there, as series creator Jonathan Boakes understands
full well what a key element sound is in building up an atmosphere
of tension and dread.
Slowly exploring the darkened halls of the abandoned Dowerton train
station and the labyrinthine corridors of the nearby hotel is an
often unnerving experience: though rarely a genuine danger, horrors
lurk in every shadow and restless ghosts wait in hiding until you’re
distracted. However, it's the carefully planned soundscape that
builds this tension: long before any visual shock comes the groan
of the timeworn floor boards, the ominous whistle of the wind, the
whispers – "Over here!" – murmured behind
your back. These sinister noises are bound to raise the hair on
the back of your neck, creating an almost unbearable suspense that
needs a release. They may be as old as gothic fiction itself, but
for its hauntingly effective use of these gimmicks, Dark Fall: Lost
Souls deserves our Best Sound Design award, and Jonathan Boakes
the thanks of every horror buff for once again delivering a genuinely
terrifying aural experience.
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REVIEWS:
“… the story is wonderful. It has all the elements you
need – an obsessed protagonist haunted by his past, a missing
girl with a dark fascination for the occult and an abandoned building
housing a horror from the past…”
www.justadventure.com “…genuinely
creepy and compelling, and it may make you reconsider playing with
the lights off…”
www.gamezone.com
“…Dark Fall: Lost Souls is an excellent adventure game…”
www.gameboomers.com
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