Black The Fall

Black The Fall is a good, not great 2.5D side-scroller puzzle game that is decent, competent, but yet, probably not worth your time. Starting with the pros -- the game has an incredible art direction and very frequently looks great. It is also short enough that it feels respectful of your time, and the puzzles frequently are quite good (not always thou), with gimmicks evolving as you move further into the game (from standalone laser pointer to controlling the robot, for instance). Most of the puzzles are physics-based and the physics are generally fine. All in all, it gives you a good time and is over before it gets too old. That said, the flaws are very hard to ignore. Narrative-wise, the game is quite minimalistic, which is a nice way to say it has the shell of a story and that`s it. And I think that's a shame, because the universe is quite interesting and well realized, but the game refuses to explain who you are, what you are doing there, and why you should care, which lower the narratives stakes and leave a lot of value at the table. While I mentioned most puzzles are good, some are incredibly obtuse and sometimes hampered by the same great art direction, which obscures elem…

Currently I enjoy playing 2.5 D puzzle platformers a lot and this is another one. Though I can recommend Black The Fall in general, there are some quite frustrating parts. I don't know through how many deaths my character had to go until I finally figured out how to solve some of the puzzles. Yet eventually it's possible (with trial and error) to find the solution. The atmosphere and graphics hit a certain tone which I enjoyed experiencing and the cute little robot dog became a nice company. I enjoyed Black The Fall over several sessions (had to pause after being a bit too frustrated sometimes) and finished the game in about 5h. After completing I reloaded some chapters to get all achievements. Played on a Lenovo Legion Go running bazzite with TPD mode set to performance (20W).

Seems to be a rather serious bug which deletes the save file after the first cutscene? Game is jank but okay, just leaving this so people can be aware. Possibly related to Linux?

It was very challenging and clever. It expects solutions of you that you really have to think about, just try everything you can conceive. It will have you get caught when you definitely wouldn't have but that is usually a sign that you aren't solving the puzzle as intended so try a different approach.

Communism's shadow A worker breaks the machine's chains Freedom waits below

It's more annoying than interesting.