After LIMBO and Monochroma, you’d think I’d be better at figuring out which platformers are trying to copy that style BEFORE I get them, but I still ended up with this game. It’s my own fault, I know.

• Black The Fall
  

  3 hours playtime

  5 of 14 achievements

This is a LIMBO clone: technically a platformer, but more focused on atmosphere than game-play, with said game-play mainly consisting of switch-hunts or riddle-style puzzles. There’s almost always some new gimmick being introduced and abandoned, so the game never really builds on any of its mechanics (most of the time, the biggest challenge is figuring out what can be interacted with in the first place). The closest it ever got to building on an established mechanic was: after it introduced the ability to get your robo-dog to lead searchlights, there was a part where you had to command the dog to move into the background (so the light was pointing away from the path rather than being blocked by a ceiling like before), but then right afterward, the game makes you jump on a platform that’s literally the same color as the wall due to both being in pitch-black shadow. This game even has some input issues, where you’ll figure out what to do, be unable to do it, then look up a walk-through only to see that you had the solution the whole time; you just didn’t push the exact right button at the exact time the game wanted you to (namely, jumping on the bar hanging the dead bodies while on the paddle-boat, getting the robo-dog to jump on the yellow crusher (if it’s too low, the cursor counts as being inside the press instead of on top of it), and getting on the bus near the end). Plus, typical for this genre of “puzzle” games: it has logic that doesn’t make sense. Is a giant shoot-on-sight robot scanning the area? Just go back the way you came for a few seconds and it’ll turn around and leave! Lastly, to add insult to injury, the game even has that cliche where your character gets injured in a cut-scene and the game slows your movement down a bunch to represent this.

Oh, and it doesn’t even save your progress per-checkpoint, so if you have to stop playing, there’s a good chance you’ll have to redo a bunch of sections you’ve already gotten past.

Not recommended.