Curtain drops on "As Dusk Falls"...

Quite the aftermath...

My wife and I finished the last two chapters of As Dusk Falls, after having a great time with the first four. This game is entirely about story, so it's hard to talk about it without spoiling the whole thing. I had a feeling all character storylines wrapped up too quickly, too easy. Most characters didn't even return in the final chapter, except in reference (non-playable). Perhaps they would have if we had made different decisions, but I doubt it. The story just focuses on the same two characters...

Hey look, a mini-game!

We mostly played it to keep everyone as safe as possible. Usually we agreed on the decisions. Sometimes I overruled my wife, when I felt a very strong dislike towards one of the other characters, and I didn't want my lead to take any crap from them. My wife was very upset when I angrily turned away someone handing me a religious flyer, for instance, saying you should at least thank them politely... Sometimes I went with my wife's decisions, even when I would have done the exact opposite had I been playing on my own. I wanted to take another character with me, but she insisted I leave them behind, thinking they would die otherwise... It's give and take when you're together!

Wow, payphones, how 90s...

When it comes to the community results, our decision-making style was pretty much all over the place. Mostly we either joined a 2/3 majority, but I liked it better when we were with the 1/3 minority. I didn't like it when it turned out almost everyone made the same decision as us, but I marveled at the decisions only 10% of the people made. I always like it when it turns out I played a game differently than most. 

In any case, we had a blast playing this! It's something different than watching a movie or TV show together, and my wife really likes being able to steer the story a bit. Though she often expects different results from the chosen dialogue options, because sometimes it's not only what you say, but how you say it, and that wasn't really incorporated into the game, so sometimes things "came out wrong", you might say, and some what she thought were positive decisions, backfired.

I'll be playing on my own again next. A new, short, sci-fi, detective story by a very prolific developer. But if anyone has any suggestions on other games like As Dusk Falls I could play with my wife again, we'll be very much obliged! 

You can find As Dusk Falls on Steam and on GOG! There are also Playstation and X-Box editions.

New game: "As Dusk Falls" playthrough!

New game!

The last time I played a game together with my wife, we put in over 100 hours spending 65 in-game days in Blue Prince. Then we gave up, because the conditions we needed to meet to make further progress were just too out of this world. When she said she wanted to play a new game the other day, I was ecstatic and tried to find something to her taste. In the past, we had fun with Heavy Rain and Beyond: Two Souls, so I figured perhaps As Dusk Falls, a game that has been sitting in my library for several years now, might be a good fit.

Now where could that hidden safe be...

First a small disclaimer: we played the game in Dutch, which you will see in the screenshots I posted. Sorry about that. It wasn't really a concious choice; the game just automatically started up that way, and since we live in Belgium and are used to translated subtitles, we kept it that way.

Do I stop the woman, or quiet the dog?

Anyway, the choice of game was a good one. With a similar gameplay style as those Quantic Dream titles I mentioned, As Dusk Falls is an interactive thriller/drama about a burglary gone wrong and two families colliding. It's mostly about making choices, giving dialogue replies but also bigger decisions on which path to take when there's a fork in the road. Then there are also some QTE's, but they're very easy and you have plenty of time to respond. I think I only ever failed one simply because I really wasn't expecting it... Well, easy for me to say, of course...

Should I do my chores, or step outside for a bit?

The most astonishing thing about the game is its graphics style. The main characters are played by real actors, but they are presented as static photos moving around in a kind of slideshow manner. Sometimes they are slightly animated, for instance when their hair is blowing in the wind. The game is fully voiced as well, though there's no lip syncing since the lips of the characters aren't animated. It looks a bit weird perhaps, but it works. Any motion in the background, however, is fluently animated, like doors opening and closing, cars driving by, rain falling, and the scenery changing in the window when you're inside a moving vehicle. It gives the game a very special animated graphic novel feel.

An overview of the community's choices

As Dusk Falls consists of six chapters, and after each chapter you get an overview of your choices, and how many of the players made the same choice. You could compare this to the Life Is Strange games, except here it's shown in a neat timeline where you can also see the forking paths, which makes it easier if you want to go back and do things differently. After five hours, my wife and I have two chapters left to go. I don't know when, since this is different from my regular gaming schedule, but I'll try to write a final post about the game when we've finished.

You can find As Dusk Falls on Steam and on GOG! There are also Playstation and X-Box editions.