07 August,2022 12:32 PM IST | Mumbai | Jaison Lewis
As Dusk Falls
There have been a few story-driven interactive movie-type games over the last few years. Even Netflix has experimented with the interactive video genre with Black Mirror: Bandersnatch. Usually, these have a few outcomes, and the story branches are not all that spread out. You can pretty much exhaust all the possibilities in a few playthroughs. As Dusk Falls is cut from this genre, where film overlaps gaming. However, it manages to keep itself a step above other interactive stories by doing things differently.
It all starts with the look. Instead of opting for pure video, As Dusk Falls uses rotoscoping to make an animated world build on top of the video. The look achieved is similar to the series Undone and the movie Scanner Darkly. The video is not continuous either. A few frames of a scene move forward in time, missing many frames along the way. It makes you feel like you are pausing for a bit while going through a flip book. It's a nice effect that makes the game stand out - feeling almost like an interactive graphic novel.
Then there is the story; you play a few different characters in the game, depending on the scene. The unique story of As Dusk falls unfolds in Two Rock, Arizona. There are no sci-fi elements thrown in. Instead, it offers several perspectives on a single life and death type situation in a believable remote town.
The game also takes its time with developing its character, offering a pretty good backstory and moral compass, tuned by you. This helps you connect with the game and the story, which is an intense drama from the start to the finish. It is also sufficiently branched out to have many outcomes during every act. Even though every playthrough takes a couple of hours, trying to unlock all the little branches could have you locked on this game for weeks.
The final piece of the puzzle that makes this a great game are the features that make it competitive. For every branch of the story you unlock, there is an achievement that also tells you the rarity of the unlocked branch. At the end of the act, you get to see a huge chart with all the different outcomes and story branches. This makes you want to explore and complete the chart. Additionally, the game also gauges your response to give you a sort of report card at the end of every act to tell you who you are deep down inside. You can also play this game with friends and make decisions as a group, and you don't need a controller to do it; there is a phone application too. All you have to do is enter the room code, and As Dusk Falls becomes a great option for game night.
The game is not entirely flawless, though. You can't skip any of the scenes and dialogues. This means by the time you are on your second or third playthrough, you might get tired of some of the scenes and dialogues in the game, but you will be unable to skip them. That art style you liked so much can also begin to seem repetitive when you can't skip it.
So should you get the game? The answer is yes. As Dusk Falls makes itself very useful by providing multiple branches to keep the story fresh every time you play it. Not to mention the mobile phone app-based interactive gameplay that can make it an instant hit for a game or even a movie night. The price of admission is free if you have an Xbox Game Pass, but if you want to buy the game in retail, it isn't very expensive either.
