Black the Fall

The magic of an independent game is that one can come from pretty much nowhere and completely blow you away. Black The Fall, the debut game from developer Sand Sailor Studio that was successfully funded via Kickstarter back in 2014, is a perfect example of that. Pitched as a 2D puzzle platforming game, the title is actually so much more than that as it explores a desolate Communist world filled to...

Black The Fall is a decent way to spend a few hours, with good puzzles, fun world-building, and great design that's all let down by a lack of any real depth.

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. There’s tons to appreciate, including its dark but detailed graphics and compelling story line, so for those that want to dive into something that’s rich in gameplay and in story it’s definitely one to pick up. Especi...

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

Through the stylishly muted visuals and the trappings of a Communist state on the brink of collapse, Black The Fall challenges you to escape its series of perilous puzzles in a bid for freedom from oppression. Though it will live in the shadows of its critically acclaimed peers and has a few rough edges, Black The Fall is a great addition to the puzzle platformer genre.

Though Black deserves credit for adding new puzzle mechanics along the way, it could’ve easily seen its 6-8 hour runtime chopped in half and still gotten its message across. That entire time I found myself wondering if, like Inside, Black would have anything to say. When I finally discovered its message at the end of the campaign, it did inspire me to look up the real-life issue it was drawing att...

Black The Fall is a puzzle platformer which wears its influences on its sleeve. Many have been quick to point out its similarities to games like Inside and dismissed as being too similar to be relevant. However, much of the indie platformer scene is nipping at Playdead’s heals, so borrowing aesthetics from them isn’t enough in itself to write a game off if it is genuinely engaging. Sadly, Black Th...

“Freedom is Control”; it’s a sentence that jumps straight out of the opening screen and sets the stage for the tone of Black The Fall from the very beginning. Orwellian in nature, it’s a clear throwback to 1984’s mantra of “War is peace, freedom is slavery, ignorance is strength” and makes it obvious to the player just what to expect from the game, assuming, like particularly everyone in the world...

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I feel pretty certain that I'm going to be bemused by other people's enjoyment of the game's fuck-you death traps, just as I was after Inside. And frankly, when so many endorsed Inside's ending, which I found utterly moronic, I feel like I may as well be clucking in the wind. So I don't doubt that Black The Fall will find its fans. I actively hated Inside, but I didn't hate this at all. For me it ...

Listen, as dystopian and mostly monochrome platform puzzlers go, Black the Fall isn't bad. But I can't tell you it's great either.