COMMENTARY CLUB 039 - The African Queen

Can you make a torpedo? Join us on an epic adventure across Africa with some Hollywood's brightest stars as we revisit a true classic - The African Queen (1951) starring Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn and directed by John Huston. 

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THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Odin, Thor and Mary?

Welcome once more dear fiends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Or rather welcome back to Asgard and the world of Valhalla! Published in 1983 for the ZX Spectrum and ported to the Commodore 64 in 1985, Valhalla was, as we have previously discussed, a ground-breaking and ambitious game. It was worlds away from the legions of Jet Set Willy clones which were clogging up game shelves back then. But was the game itself any good? 

It certainly sounded like it was going to be amazing - hanging out in a world of Norse gods and monsters, undertaking epic quests, and generally being allowed to do what the hell you liked. Well, provided you could get the bugger to load that is - for the first drawback to Valhalla was a long loading time, which greatly increased the chances of it crashing.  However, once you had listened to the five  or so minutes of electronic screeching - surely a formative influence on a generation of kids who would grow up to invent acid house, techno and jungle a decade or so later - the first thing to strike you is the scale of the world. 

The game plays out in three distinct realms from old Norse cosmology, Asgard (the world of the gods), Midgard (the land of humans) and Hell (realm of the dead). Traditionally in Norse legends there were nine worlds, with additional realms for giants, elves, dwarves and so forth, but here three worlds work well enough. And just like in the old sagas, brave heroes could physically travel between the worlds. Now in the game, these worlds of possibly exciting adventures comprised of some 81 different screens, each one a separate location - as can be seen here on the map of Valhalla. Now travel between the locations was accomplished in the usual text adventure fashion i.e. typing into "go north", "go south-east" etcetera. And there were some short-cuts available too - some screens/locations had hidden "ringways" - magic portals that teleported you to another location if you possessed a magic ring. 

But there were two downsides to all of this. Firstly you really needed to make some kind of map if you wanted to avoid becoming hopelessly confused and lost. But more importantly, travelling to another location meant the game had to draw another scene. Now the Movisoft engine did so by drawing in layers - first the background, then the midground, foreground, buildings, people and any items there. Hence travelling was a bit on the slow side as it tended to take about half a minute or so to render everything. Now playing Valhalla now, this kind of thing makes the game very slow and tedious indeed, however in fairness back in the day people didn't expect things to happen super quickly quite as much, and this kind of waiting for the computer to render a new screen wasn't exactly uncommon in the early adventure games. Plus it's easy to forget now how impressive the graphics were back then, for it was only a couple of years earlier than game graphics had consisted of basic shapes such as rectangles and squares moving about. And of course there was a novelty value to watching the computer draw in each scene layer by layer too.

Now as for doing the quests, while the instructions which came with the game were good,  it took so long to travel anywhere or get anything done, many players soon got distracted and started just having fights for the hell it and generally running amuck. Which is arguably closer to how real Vikings might have behaved... Well, that was my excuse anyway. But anyhow, historical accuracy aside, the game itself had a certain sense of mischief to it anyway. To begin with you could spend many happy hours egging on various gods and monsters to fight each other, but Valhalla had some mischief of its own up its sleeve too.

Firstly as the program had a limit on how many items could be in any one location. There could only ever be eight items in one place, whether on the ground, in a chest, or in a cupboard.  And if this limit was exceeded, the game had a novel and amusing solution. For the very second a ninth item was dropped, a character cheekily named Klepto appeared and stole one!

Which item got pilfered by Klepto was entirely random, and hence it was very possible he could take one of the much sought magic items you'd been questing for if you weren't careful. Of course, should this calamity befall you, you may very well ended up typing in "Klepto is a little shit" into the game... Although in fairness, given the freedom offered by Valhalla, and bearing in mind the general character of kids, if you were playing this back in the day, you'd no doubt already been typing in every rude word you could think of. 

However this would reveal another of Valhalla's little jokes. For swearing elicited the cryptic response - "Mary is not amused".  And a small figure would march on the screen and come and give your character a slap! Now if you are thinking "hang on, I don't remember a Mary in Norse mythology!" you'd be quite right. For this character was named after a very familiar and often hated figure in 1980s Britain - the self-appointed moral guardian Mary Whitehouse. 

For many years Mrs Whitehouse campaigned relentlessly and fearlessly against swearing, sex and violence in our media, and as a result was seen by many as being more terrible than all the monsters and demons of Valhalla, mainly of course by kids who were mad keen to see all that swearing, sex and violence. Ironically, many of us only learned about the existence of some erotic TV series or violent movie in the first place thanks to Mrs Whitehouse protesting about it. Naturally when playing Valhalla, it was great fun to just bait Mary, albeit in a pixelated form. And of course, a new unintended subgame emerged - and that was trying to discover exactly how many and which swear words the game's text parser recognised! 

Now of course, it would have been child's play to have the game's text parser not to recognise any swearing at all, but a generation of kids are very glad that they did. After all, anyone who played The Hobbit really wanted to the game to recognise the command "Tell Thorin to shut the fuck up about gold". Quite clearly, the programming team behind Valhalla had played more than a few adventures and what's more understood the mindset of their target audience. Hence Mary was a fun way to allow you to swear within the game, but, and this is the clever bit, in such a way so that boring grown-ups, who had a massive downer on computer games anyway, couldn't kick off about it. Now that's real genius! 

THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Valhalla I Am Loading!

Hello dear fiends! Welcome once again to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! Now then, last time we were adventuring in the long lost lands of home micro gaming, searching for treasure, slaying dragons and wishing Thorin would stop singing about ruddy gold all the time. As we discussed at some length, the home micro version of The Hobbit back in 1982 was something of a milestone in computer gaming, and a newly formed company called Legend was very keen to pick up where Bilbo and Gandalf had left off...  

Now Legend, a spin-off company from business software outfit Microl, were not a fly-by-night (or should that be type-by-night) games publisher. Unlike dozen of other software houses that sprang up around the same time - for there wuz gold in tham thar gamin' hills - Legend didn't release hundreds of titles which very often looked suspiciously similar to other hit games. Rather they released a handful of high quality titles, with their first offering Valhalla setting the bar rather high. 

Written for the ZX Spectrum, and later ported to the Commodore 64, Valhalla was a game that came in a big box that screamed "QUALITY PRODUCT", and with a price tag to match - a very very expensive for the time £14.95. Although it was re-released a few years later as a classic title, in more modest packaging and at the pocket money friendly price of £2.99.  Valhalla was created by Richard Edwards, Graham Asher, Charles Goodwin, James Learmont and Andrew Owen, and was mostly written in the common language to home micro's BASIC, with the game engine being dubbed "Movisoft", which sounded very futuristic and interactive. In fact it's a very early example of a game having a named software engine.

And very impressive it was too. Like The Hobbit there was a vast world to explore, a large cast of characters to interact with and you played the game by typing instructions into the game. The downside of this ambition was that the game notoriously took bloody ages to load - well over 5 minutes to load - which a long time even in the era of the home micro when loading a game took several minutes. As one reviewer of the day quipped "I only just had enough time to load Valhalla - let alone review it". And as with many of the larger home micro games, a longer loading time meant increased chances of the game glitching and not loading properly. I know of several folks who never got the darn thing to do anything but display the loading screen. Which admittedly was rather nice, showing a digitised version of the famous 7th century Anglo-saxon helmet found at Sutton Hoo, but not exactly as thrilling as hanging out and fighting with Norse gods and giants. 

So then, provided you got the game to load properly, what did Valhalla offer the player? Well, the goal of the game was to collect six magic objects - Ofnir (a key), Drapnir (a ring), Skornir (a shield), Skalir (a sword), Felstrong (an axe) and Grimnir (a helmet). These magical treasures could only be collected in order, hence to get Drapnir you had to have Ofnir first and so forth. And while the items were in particular locations, if you died, any you had would be taken from you and hidden in a random location somewhere in the game world. On the upside however, dying was not a big deal in a world of gods and monsters, for if you were slain, you found yourself in Hell. However in accordance with the old legends and sagas, the land of the dead as just one of nine worlds in the old Norse cosmology, and hence just as you could travel from the world of men (Midgard) to the realms of the gods (Asgard), if you had died, the adventure wasn't over, you could just walk out of the Hell and continue your quest.

Valhalla also had some rather clever features too. Those of you have know your Dungeons & Dragons (whether as a tabletop game, or one of the many computer RPGs that use its rulesets) will be familiar with the concept of a player's character having an alignment - that is to say, a defined trait which maps out their philosophy and morals, whether good or evil, an upholder of law or a devotee of chaos. Now in Valhalla, your character doesn't have the usual RPG style character sheet with stats and traits, but very cleverly the game does take note of how you behave in the game world. When you begin your character is neutral - that is to say he is classed by the game as neither good nor evil. However as play progresses, your actions are noted by the game engine and other characters in the world of Valhalla will react accordingly. Hence if you are helpful and friendly to characters on the side of good such as Thor or Odin, all characters on the light side of the Force as it were will be inclined to be more helpful to you in your quest. Likewise being chummy with the likes of Loki will earn you favour with the forces of darkness. A very cool bit of programming I'm sure you will agree, and very ahead of its time. 

However Valhalla has an even bigger claim to fame, for it was one of the very first true open world games. Now The Hobbit is often hailed as being a pioneer of open world gaming as you could head off anywhere into Middle Earth, but at the end of the day if you wanted to get anywhere at all in the game you still had to follow a linear plot that mirrored the journey and adventures in the original book. Now normally in RPG games, the world waits for you to do something and then reacts, but things were not like that in Valhalla. Here the world of the game carried on regardless of what you were doing, characters would go about their business without waiting to react to you - they would travel between the world, eat, drink, and fight as they pleased. In fact, once the game started it would essentially play itself. Obviously that's not to say it would make choices for you and you could sit back and watch the game do the quests for you. But on the other hand, events in the game weren't tied in the slightest to you doing the quests, and indeed if you just wanted to explore, hang out with the gods or get into fights - i.e. generally doing what the hell you liked - you could.

Now all of this was obviously very impressive... But technical cleverness doth not a great game make. After all, there have been many titles down the years that boasted of having revolutionary concepts, ground-breaking coding and super new spanky graphics, but in terms of actual playability have sucked harder than a Hoover on overdrive! Next week, we are dusting off the old Spectrum, praying the rubber keyboard hasn't perished, and will be playing Valhalla! 

THE 'ORRIBLE 'OUSE OF TERRIBLE OLD TAT - Shut up Thorin!

Welcome once again dear fiends to the 'Orrible 'Ouse of Terrible Old Tat! This time we are continuing our explorations of the weird world of the home micro and taking a look that some games that are truly legendary. Or at least was released by a company called Legend...  

Now at the dawn of the home micro age, there was a common perception that these small and affordable computers, that didn't require a massive room filled with spinning tape wheels and an evil genius with a beard who would program it to run amuck and try and take over the world, would mainly be used for serious purposes. Such as science, education and business. And naturally as soon as the public began snapping up the likes of the Sinclair ZX81, many saw a glimmer on the technological horizon of vast empires built on writing software. And this was no mirage - indeed there was a new frontier opening based on computer publishing... 

But the gleaming city which was built on software didn't turn out to be based on accounting programs. Nor was it built on rock and roll as predicted by Starship. For despite the efforts of pioneers and gadget gurus to educate the public on the power and potential of the mighty micro, what actually happened was that people bought them and then completely failed to get to grips with them. However, the nation's kids very quickly mastered how to load a game, and very soon the software sections in shops were expanding to contain a tidal wave of games. 

Now in these early days, one of the companies formed to create and sell business software was an outfit called Microl. However at some point in 1982, Microl very cannily realised that the big money was in games, and set up a spin-off outfit solely to create gaming titles. Headed up by John and Jan Peel, this new gaming software company was called Legend. Now although there were a host of fly-by-night companies that popped up and foisted a legion of shoddy games upon us all, Legend was no quick cash-in venture and the Peels were interested and excited by the possibilities of the emerging games scene. Quite correctly, they realised that computer games weren't just a passing fad, and that the power of the home micro allowed for gaming to evolve way beyond the arcade titles of the past and become a whole new media in themselves. And from the start they were aiming for quality. In an interview with Your Spectrum magazine (see here) , the Peels claimed "We are looking for TV quality images coupled with the interactive potential of a home computer". 

Now one of the most impressive games in the early days of home micros was The Hobbit created by Beam Software in 1982. In many ways, this computer game version of JRR Tolkien's classic wasn't exactly breaking new ground - it was basically a text adventure, a style of computer game which had been around since the mid 1970s. However these earlier text games had been mainly played on computers in labs and universities, and the general public still generally thought of computer games as things like Pong, Space Invaders or Pac Man. However The Hobbit really grabbed the public's attention - to begin with it came with a copy of the original book (see! computers were educational!) and as well as the usual typing in of phrases such as "Ask Gandalf to open the door" and "Ask Thorin to stop singing about gold", The Hobbit came with pictures. Yes, they were primitive and took ages to load but they were based on famous illustrations and really brought the game to life. 

And to the vast majority of people who were just discovering the joys of computers, The Hobbit was a massive leap forward in game-play from running about overeating or crashing spaceships. Instead of repeating the same actions or doing the same tasks over and over again, except slightly quicker on each level, in The Hobbit you could go where you liked and do what you liked. Well, provided the program could understand the command you typed in. The text parser in The Hobbit was good, but it never understood the more frequent types of commands typed in by kids determined to mispend their youth, as seen below...

Now obviously to get anywhere in the game you had to replicate the plot line of the original book, and in fact you could complete the adventure in under ten minutes if you knew what you were doing (as can be seen in walkthrough videos like this one).  However there was nothing to stop you heading off in any direction you liked, and causing mayhem in Middle Earth. And this kind of freedom in a computer game was nothing short of astounding back in the day. In fact, the lure of just wandering anywhere you liked was so great, most players never found some of the notorious bugs in some versions of the game which actually made the proper adventure unfinishable! 

Now the Peels rightly recognised that The Hobbit was a real milestone in the development of computer gaming, not just in the technical sophistication of the game engine but also in the impact it had made on the public's perception of what games could be. They realised that games that let players create their own adventures, tell their own stories had the potential to be as addictive as soap operas, and thus Legend's first venture was intended to pick up where The Hobbit left off. Very astutely for their first game, they chose as their subject matter some of the very same source materials that had inspired Tolkien's famous tales, Norse mythology. And the game that resulted was Valhalla! 

Next time - we voyage to the realms of Asgard, journey to Hell, and insult assorted Norse divinites!  

DARK FALL: THE JOURNAL

Video games are often seen as the poor country cousin of the other creative industries. Even when the gaming industry is stealing an increasing number of punters away from cinema, television and music, its elder siblings tend to blame their decreasing audiences on illegal downloading rather than acknowledge there’s a new kid on the block. Video games tend be viewed as a species of toy rather than a medium in itself, and rightly or wrongly, video games are seen as incapable of delivering the same level of art as a good film, a literary novel or a classic album.

Unusually for a medium that is over three decades old – the first widely available video game being the coin-op Computer Space in 1971 – there are still no clear aesthetics in place for judging a game’s artistic values. And when the mainstream media covers video gaming, it concentrates on just two things - either the latest hardware/title as the tax on parents’ pockets at Christmas, or outrage over the violent content - effectively writing off gaming as either a gimmicky consumer craze or a medium analogous with cheap exploitation films.

It’s a somewhat ironic state of affairs, as the mainstream media has been banging on about ‘interactivity’ for the last few years and at the same time ignoring the most interactive new medium of all. Frequently the concept of interactive story telling is predicted as the Next Big Thing in film and television but video games have been delivering this style of content for years.

But all too often, games are written off as merely serving up shallow repetitive thrills and being incapable of delivering an emotionally engaging experience. And it’s true many games are repetitive, shallow and catering to the lowest common denominator. Yet, the same charges apply equally for a great many blockbusters and TV shows, or for that matter any art form. As the famous Sturgeon’s Law points out “Ninety percent of everything is crud”.

The closest the video game has come to being recognised as an art form was with Myst. This adventure title was ground breaking in many ways; no only did it help popularise the CD rom disc as a format and take the adventure game to a new level of sophistication, but it’s blend of striking imagery and immersive story led it to be hailed by the likes of Wired magazine and even the New York Times as signs that the video game was in fact evolving into art.

However despite Myst spawning as many clones as its contemporary Doom, an equally ground breaking title, not long after the adventure game started to decline in popularity. And largely this was due to the huge advances in graphics. The advent of chipsets able to render 3D environments populated with numerous polygon denizens brought exciting new depth and dynamics to RPGs, sports sims, and most of all, first person shooters, but left the adventure genre behind. The point and click slideshow format now looked very static and so the adventure genre found itself slipping into a niche market.

But also this waning of popularity was perhaps partly due to the hordes of Myst-clones themselves, which often consisted of little other than pretty scenes framing logic puzzles. However of all the different types of video games, the adventure genre was always the closest to that fabled media grail, interactive fiction and some did see the potential to create a title that could combine artistic and literary depth in the game format…

Now, over the last few years, I had become somewhat disenchanted with the whole video gaming shebang. I was finding that increasingly new games were just retreads of older titles but with ever flashier graphics, and fostering the feeling that I really should be finding more constructive ways of spending my time. However while reading various internet forum discussions on what were the scariest games of all time, as well as a good many of my old favourites like Doom, Quake, Resident Evil, Thief The Dark Project and Silent Hill, one name kept coming up which had bypassed my radar – Dark Fall: The Journal.

Some cursory research revealed the reason for this – Dark Fall was a point and click adventure, released for the PC back in 2002. Now I’d played Myst and a few other adventure titles back in the day, but like a lot of gamers of my generation I’d been seduced away from the genre with the advent of 3D environments, and despite hearing glowing reports about Myst’s successors such as Gabriel Knight and Broken Sword, I’d never bothered to check them out, being more interested in games that offered a wide range of weaponry than puzzle solving.

However now I was somewhat bored with slinging rockets, building armies and crashing cars, and so checking out something that offered a less familiar style of gameplay seemed just the ticket. But more importantly, I was highly intrigued by the accounts of the sheer terror and dread this game invoked. And better yet several people were claiming this game captured the eerie strangeness of the ghost stories of MR James and of cult TV series Sapphire & Steel – two of my all time favourites in the field of weird fiction. And so I took the plunge and tracked down a copy…

“I know what you’re thinking - he only ever phones if there’s something wrong. Well there is something wrong. Very wrong… Come to Dowerton Station, it’s abandoned. I’ll be waiting. I really need your help on this… The sooner you can get here the better as this place is beginning to freak me out… I can hear it. It’s right outside my door, whispering. Whispering my name... It knows my name!”

And so begins Dark Fall: The Journal. Once you arrive at the derelict Dowerton Station, you discover your brother has vanished, as have two student ghost hunters. However you are not entirely alone, for the unquiet dead haunt the long closed down station and a dark presence stalks the empty rooms and corridors…

The game’s premise is fairly straight forward – explore the station and its attached hotel and unravel the mystery behind the disappearances. Unlike other games, there aren’t a series of levels to work through; rather there is just one expansive location to explore as you like. And as you make your way through the dim rooms and shadowed corridors, you gradually piece together the story of the strange events that have occurred here.

Technically the environment is presented as a series of screens and the main interface is a cursor, which as you explore the scene, changes to show you the different directions to move in, things to examine and objects you can interact with. Now at first this may seem a little primitive to those of you who are more used to galloping about 3D environments, but hey this is quite an old game. However this old school system does have its advantages, chiefly that you can get more one end of the station to the other very quickly, cutting down all that tedious trudging about that often blights a lot of first person perspective games – what a friend of mine refers to as ‘keying about’ i.e. having to troll through a lot of already cleared areas to return to unlocked a door at the other end of the level.

More importantly, the screens still look pretty lush even on a new high end system. As you can see from the screenshots, Dark Fall’s graphics have the feel of illustrations rather photo realism, which brings the game a good deal of atmosphere and a look all of its own. Also the screens aren’t entirely static – small touches of animation bring the scenes to life with flickering lamps, mysterious lights flitting about and ominous moving shadows.


However where the game really impresses is the use of sound. Dark Fall uses audio in the same unsettling way as the classic The Haunting (1963); Dowerton is alive with eerie creaks, taps and scrabbling, not mention the voices of the long time dead. Like Robert Wise before him, creator Jonathan Boakes understands that often the most frightening things are those which you can hear but cannot see.

In terms of gameplay, like most adventure games the emphasis is on finding objects and clues rather than amassing weapons. There are no hordes of monsters and ghouls to slay but there is a dark force to be defeated here. And you will do it through detective work rather than firepower, and having played a great many horror themed shooters, I have to say it was a disconcerting experience not having the usual shotgun at my side.

Which brings me to a key point – from Doom onwards there have been many games where inspire fear – any regular gamers will know what I mean – the slow edging through darkened corridors and the shock as some beast leaps out of the shadows to attack you. However the thing is, the various monsters that stalk first person shooters very quickly lose their fear factor; once you work out which weapon takes them down effectively the creatures that early in the game inspired dread very quickly become mere inconveniences.

Now as Dark Fall is an investigation rather than a bug hunt, the game is populated by presences rather than enemies. So you have the growing feeling that you are not alone, that there are unseen malign forces gathering in the shadows, and a sudden crash or a disembodied voice will have out leaping out of your skin as much as any lurking zombie attack. But that sense of terror is never deflated by combat and the eerie atmosphere Dark Fall builds doesn’t dissipate when you turn off the game. Indeed after a few hours exploring the deserted station, an unexpected creak from somewhere in your own home will have your heart racing.

Make no mistake, this is a very frightening game and like the best ghost stories and the best horror films is best enjoyed at night, alone and in the dark. It really is a master class is atmosphere and suggestion. However there is a good deal more to Dark Fall than some finely crafted chills.

The first frequently encountered curse of the adventure game is pixel hunting. For those who don’t know, pixel hunting is the tedious process of having to carefully sweep the mouse over every inch of the screen in order to discover a hot spot only a few pixels wide. Thankfully Dark Fall avoids this, with all the hot spot areas being of a reasonable size.

The second curse is the arbitrary puzzle, as countless Myst clones discovered, with lots of titles comprising of little other than a selection of puzzles linked by the sketchiest framing device. Now there are plenty of puzzles to solve in Dark Fall, but they are skilfully woven into the story and fit logically into the setting. Hence there are torn up notes to reassemble, combinations to find and codes to crack. And there plenty of clues, and in many cases solutions, dotted around to find. Basically to resolve the challenges of the game as a real detective would, working methodically and thinking logically rather than being a subscriber to Logic Puzzler monthly. Often I found that when I was utterly lost as to how to solve something, nine times out of ten it was because I hadn’t yet found the relevant hint or clue yet. Furthermore, the game has an ingenious inbuilt hint system for the bewildered – one of the first spirits encountered can be consulted for clues on any sticky issues.

Like many of you out there, I’ve always fancied trying my hand at sleuthing, and like a lot of horror fans, I‘ve always been tempted to give ghost hunting a go. Dark Fall allows you to do both in a highly satisfying and realistic manner. There’s a real sense of accomplishment when you finally work out the solution to some problem or discover a piece of evidence that that ties two elements of the mystery together.

And in this regard, Dark Fall actually delivers a fuller role playing experience than most video game RPGs. To begin with, the setting is highly immersive; the Dowerton station feels like a real place and the game conjures up a distinct atmosphere for this beautifully rendered location. Secondly, you do not only have to think like an investigator, but also act like one – unless you are blessed with a photographic memory, you will need to record your findings as you explore. And if you play in the dark as I did – which I highly recommend – with the only illumination being the monitor screen you’ll need a torch to flick on while you scribble down notes or sketch a copy of one of the many strange arcane symbols.

There is a great deal of depth to Dark Fall. As well as piecing together the events of the central mystery, equally intriguing is uncovering the intertwining stories of the former residents. Rather than mere ciphers for plot development, real characters emerge as you investigate. And this not only lends verisimilitude to the unfolding spooky tale but gives Dark Fall literary weight – the story is not just one of ghostly phenomena but of history and the relationship between the past and the present.

There are also plenty allusions and references made to other works which adds to the fun for the literate gamer. Any fans of Sapphire & Steel will be instantly reminded of Assignment 2, and as you investigate it becomes clear that this is intended to be the same deserted railway station in that story. And additionally there are several nods to the great MR James. Thematically Dark Fall explores the same territory of both Sapphire & Steel and the Jamesian school of ghost stories, playing with the concepts of time out of joint and the baleful influence of the past breaking into the here and now, but creating something that is unique to itself rather than a mere pastiche or tired retread of either.

In a medium so often decried for its shallow story telling, Dark Fall delivers a well rounded narrative. And as the nature of the game allows you to roam at will, doing things in no set order, what we have here is a non linear text in which no two players will experience in the same way but still telling the same coherent story – something that cannot be said for many experimental novels that attempt something similar.

Dark Fall is a tour de force on many levels, and is all the more impressive for being the work of one man, Jonathan Boakes. In my earlier piece on video games, I made much of the value of gamers being able to make games themselves, and Dark Fall is the perfect example of this. Although made with limited means, like a lot of great works, these constraints have inspired creativity, invention and imagination. And the strength of having one man with vision rather than a committee is borne out here.

Since Dark Fall, Boakes has produced a sequel, contributed to a similar eerie investigation game Barrow Hill, and most recently released The Lost Crown, a highly ambitious ghost hunting adventure. Expect reviews of all of these in due course! Currently he’s working on Dark Fall: Lost Souls which hopefully will be released very soon.

Jonathan Boakes himself has said that his games are really interactive ghost stories and really there is no better description of Dark Fall. If Myst was hailed as showing evidence that video games could approach the realms of art, then surely Dark Fall is the proof that the medium can deliver as a form of literature, if not art itself.

Dark Fall has recently been reissued as a special edition available here. This version has been polished and tweaks to run on modern computers and comes but also a host of other goodies. Firstly there is its sequel Dark Fall: Lights Out – appearing in here in a heavily revised Director’s Cut. If the first game riffs on Sapphire & Steel the second takes the scifi gothics of Philip Hinchcliffe era Doctor Who as its inspiration. Additional you also get walkthrough guides to both games by Boakes himself, a rather lovely ebook collecting some of his favourite classic ghost stories and a CD of the marvellously evocative music of both games.

So as the nights are drawing in and the days are growing shorter, it’s the ideal time of year to check out Dark Fall: The Journal, while the shadows lengthen and the air is haunted by mists. Needless to say I heartily recommend it – not only is it one of the scariest games I’ve ever played (actually it was the scariest game I ever played … until The Lost Crown), but also one of the most satisfying.