Black The Fall

Black the Fall is a very interesting title inspired by games like Limbo or Inside, but it has with its own features. The trial and error based puzzles can be quite exasperating, but the overall experience is worth it.

The similarities to Inside are unfortunate, but this is still a gripping and inventive action puzzler with a grim, if unsubtle, message about authoritarianism.

A stylish, bleak puzzler which overcomes many of its flaws through tightly polished delivery.

Black the Fall paints a pretty bleak picture of a quite personal dystopia. It doesn’t excel at its puzzle-solving all that often, nor does it always feel well-designed, but it does well enough to keep you moving through the oppression in the hope the protagonist gets to fulfill his dream of freedom from it.

Black the Fall definitely isn’t for the casual gamer; it’s crazy tough, but for someone looking for a fun challenge it’s worth a try - or two, or three... since you’ll be dying. A lot.

Sure, it could’ve done so with a bit more subtlety – it's a bit heavy-handed at the very end – but at least Black does have a point to make. It’s just a shame that it wrapped that in a game that’s so shamelessly and distractingly derivative.

Black The Fall is an atmospheric 2D puzzle platformer, and although it creates an interesting tone, the game itself can't quite hold up against the titans of the genre.

The proverbial meat of the experience consists of interesting concepts that are executed poorly. Much like what the player will encounter during several puzzles, gameplay itself feels like an ill-informed leap of faith that elicits more far exasperation than elation.

The word I would best use to describe Black The Fall is perfunctory. It mostly functions, but has no highs outside of the opening. It offers no narrative incentive to deal with its onslaught of boring and outright bad puzzles. I rarely finish games that make me wish I could have the time I spent with them back; Black The Fall is an unfortunate exception.

Tries and fails to replicate Inside's brilliance. [Issue#190, p.78]