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Despite it forming a sizeable portion of my favourite games ever, I don’t play all that much interactive fiction. It’s a strange realm of games. It asks very little, and yet is also sort of hard to get into.
Blackout: The Darkest Night is a “choose your own adventure” style piece with some light jigsaw puzzles. Where even some of my favourites took a bit of time and focus to draw me in, Blackout grabbed me before I was even sure what it was.
The initial setup is coming round from a bout of amnesia, a rather clichéd device that you shouldn’t count against this one. Partly that’s because the reason you have amnesia is entirely justified, and partly because the mystery itself is compelling enough to carry you along anyway. Who are you? What happened? Why did you wake up in an alley close to some strange noises, and should you investigate them?
Right away, you’re asked to make significant decisions, but given just enough information to tell that there’s no wrong answer. This is a game where your actions determine who you are, not whether you’re allowed to progress. Act boldly and directly and you’ll increase your courage, but perhaps expose yourself to harm or trauma that will reduce your strength or sanity respectively. After the opening scene you’ll likely see an option blocked off due to your balance of those three attributes (or sometimes the handful of items you can acquire). It’s a simple structure but handled very neatly. Immediately comprehensible, with no second guessing of the game itself even though you will naturally have to make several judgement calls, in particular, deciding how far you want to poke your nose into things that you’re perhaps better off not knowing.
It reminded me of the excellent Omen Exitio in fact, for its balance of expressiveness and concision. It also shares that game’s sense of creeping menace and growing hints that you’re sniffing about the edges of a terrible truth that Man Ought Not To Know. Though much less of a slow burn, it kept its ambiguity well for a good chunk of my first playthrough, enough so that I’m being rather careful not to give away much of its plot.
It’s a well condensed mystery story with writing that’s evocative without laying it on too thick or confusing a wordcount with value. There’s barely a word wasted in fact, and its comic book art and few visual and audio effects are similarly economical and thus very effective in maintaining a solid atmosphere. I’ve just now realised why the puzzles are jigsaws: It’s so that you’re literally piecing together photos of your memories. I am a fool.
Blackout will be over for you in an afternoon even if you’re a leisurely reader and keen to tap it out completely. One path through it takes a fast reader about an hour, but you’d be cheating yourself if you didn’t give it another few goes to see the alternative paths and endings. It’ll make for a good afternoon, and we could all use more of those.
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