Black The Fall mixes Limbo and Oddworld in a bleak adventure
Crowdfunding effort joins forces with Square Enix.
Black The Fall is one of the more striking 2.5D adventures on the horizon. A monochromatic mix of exploration, stealth and platforming, it appears to be influenced by Limbo, the early Oddworld titles and Mark of the Ninja. Its developer, the Romanian Sand Sailor Studio, has named Another World and Flashback as inspirations as well.
Currently on Kickstarter, Black The Fall is the latest title to be part of the Square Enix Collective - a selection of games voted on by the community that Square will help promote in exchange for five per cent of its crowdfunding spoils.
So what makes Black The Fall unique in an industry full of bleak side-scrolling indie affairs? It's not the premise - which sees an amnesiac rising up against a totalitarian machine that rules society - but rather its cohesive, dynamic world.
Black The Fall will give players plenty of choices in how to react to its robust ecosystem of people and machines with such varied inhabitants as workers, children, beggars, agents, drones and more. How you act around the different characters you come across will influence how they'll treat you throughout the game. Kill everything in sight and folks will set up defenses against you. Take a stealthy approach and this won't be an issue. You can even get characters to aid you by helping out their brethren. Your reputation proceeds you.
There's also a swish weather system, environmental puzzles and some neat "2.75D" camera tricks where it alters its angle to mix things up and make everything more cinematic, so to speak.
Black The Fall is aiming for an August 2015 launch on PC, Mac and Linux with a later mobile release on iOS, Android, Windows Phone. A £40K stretch goal will bring it to consoles such as PS4, Xbox One, Vita, Wii U and Ouya.
Backers can reserve the computer versions for £10 / $16, while pledges of £12 / $20 will also include an Early Access release and a mobile port when that's ready.
So far Black The Fall has accumulated £15,602 of its £25K goal and it has until Halloween to make the rest.