As Dusk Falls Test – Nothing is more refreshing than unexpected multiplayer in a story game

As Dusk Falls is a perfect example of a successful emotional, exciting story and a good implementation of the cooperative experience.

Route 66. Arizona. 1998. There is a sense of freedom in the air – freedom and the desire to escape from your own problems, from your own history and somehow from your own family. This is the emotion with which As Dusk Falls captivates its players for six hours. The game is the debut work of Interior/Night, a studio based in the heart of London but preferring to give its story an American flair and is directed by two women who are behind some well-known games.

CEO and creative director Caroline Marchalwho was already responsible for Heavy Rain or Beyond: Two Souls and production director Charu Desodt, who started as a programmer at Sony for SingStar and then worked her way through VR and mobile games, finally want to tell their own stories and realize them in their own games. A look inside the studio and what As Dusk Falls is featuring Twitch Plays Pokemon has to do, you will find out in the following video. I actually got to travel to London to see what happens behind the scenes:

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The weight of your own decision

As pointed out in the preview, As Dusk Falls is undoubtedly story-driven. This is captivatingly written. “Breaking Bad”-good. From the first to the sixth chapter, you can feel that professionals are at work here. There is no passage that allows boredom to arise, on the contrary: a conflict is created right at the beginning, which builds up tension that lasts until the last scene. Nevertheless, this tension doesn’t seem draining, because the game also gives you a little breathing space and space for processing – but never too much.

Basically, the story is about two families and their inner conflicts. On the one hand we have the Holts, a notorious family who, out of desperation, decide to break into the sheriff’s office and the Walker family, who are forced to move across half of America. The families meet at the “Desert Dream” motel, where a hostage situation occurs. How much this heist escalates depends on the decisions of the players, but in the end the event leaves a traumatic mark on all characters.

At the end of each chapter a summary of the history is listed. Here is a very detailed account of how the story came about. After each chapter, you can pick up where you want to change the storyline. There are dead characters, injuries and strokes of fate that can be prevented or caused. However, there is no game over, because you should learn to live with the consequences. Even if you could change the course of the game as you like after each chapter, the game encourages you to play through the entire story with the decisions you have made.

The Sound of Freedom

The approximately six-hour drama is not only accompanied by the unusually community-oriented gameplay – which I will come to in the next section – but above all by an excellently implemented German dubbing. Whether the evil policeman Dante Romerothe sweet daughter Zoe Walker or the loving father Vincent Walker, the speakers sound just right. As Dusk Falls clearly shows why localization can enrich the game experience in a sustainable way if it is implemented properly.

Of course, the music also contributes to the mood: in this case it is a mixture of sound sequences that set the right ambience for the emotional mood and licensed tracks that are played as whole songs.

Xbox also provided the interior/night team with psychologists to help develop the characters. In my opinion, they did a fantastic job, because almost all of the characters in the game are accompanied by tragedies. Whether it’s through family members engaging in violence across generations, betrayal of trust in marriage, or coming to terms with the hostage situation itself, the characters always remain three-dimensional. The choices are understandable, even if the impulses for the actions of the characters are ultimately directed by the players.

A shared experience, an individual statistic

This is where an unusual component comes into play that makes As Dusk Falls very special: you can also experience the interactive story as a multiplayer. There is a local mode, an online mode, a mixed form is also possible and in addition crossplay and Twitch integration so that the chat can be involved in decisions. Only one person has to own the game, the rest can participate in the game through a free app – or through a controller in local mode.

The multiplayer is clearly aimed at cooperation: you can participate with up to eight people. Everyone is assigned a color and then you can start. In QuickTime events everyone has to take the right action, in decisions majority wins, all comparable to Until Dawn and similar titles. But you can also object and take the other players by surprise despite the majority. This can only be done three times in the entire co-op, it would be annoying if one person constantly made decisions on his own. These options are intended to stimulate discussions about moral choices, and they do. They often also provide funny moments in the game. I find the approach of experiencing a story as a shared experience exciting and skillfully implemented in this game. The multiplayer is accessible not only in terms of difficulty, but also through the free app for all interested parties. In addition, it runs technically error-free.

What is also extremely great here is that at the end of each chapter, a profile is created for each individual player: Were your decisions more family-oriented or character-driven? Are you impulsive or do you sometimes think long and hard about your choices? These profiles are then displayed for everyone to see. This happens in single and multiplayer mode. In multiplayer there are also “Nemeses” and “Soulmates” in which the relationship of gameplay between two players is shown. A creative idea that brings the players even closer together and encourages exchange! In addition, the multiplayer encourages you to play the game more often, with different people and not just several times alone. Smart!

A real eyesore

The cast were staged for As Dusk Falls in a kind of graphic novel. While these are actual actors, their footage has been post-edited to make it into the game, following the team’s motto “Every Frame A Picture.” The effort involved in this style was higher than one might think, as you can see in the video above. Each shot was reworked by hand, color gimmicks and subsequent contours in the faces are intended to support the emotions of the protagonists. Nevertheless, this style is unfortunately my biggest point of criticism. But from the reactions of the comments to the preview, it had to be said that this is purely a matter of taste. Nevertheless, I stick to the opinion that a different form of representation would have given the whole game an enormous boost.

In general, there are only small things to complain about. In order to fill this section properly, I had to dig pretty deep into the gripe box. For example, I noticed that in single player, the reaction times that had a time limit got a very long time limit. This does not cause any difficulty, and experienced players do not really experience stress throughout the game. The time is only supposed to simulate pressure, which is also generated in multiplayer so that everyone is careful. It’s a pity that this stress isn’t really generated after the third chapter, because you realize that you can take your time. On the other hand, if you prefer to discuss every decision with euphoric friends, you can switch off the timer completely, which probably eliminates the problem.

Other little things that I noticed negatively are strange changes in the volume of the original sound. Some sentences were too quiet or too loud for no apparent reason. The scenes that took place in cars were also a bit strange. The characters were presented in 2D throughout, while the cars had a three-dimensionality, which in some passages resulted in a paper figure suddenly sitting in the car, very much in Paper Mario style. That didn’t go so well with the serious tone of these passages. But these things I actually rarely encountered in the six chapters.

Conclusion

All in all, As Dusk Falls is a successful debut from Interior/Night. The story is consistently exciting, the characters are well thought out down to the last detail, the interaction options are accessible but not boring, and the multiplayer brings a very special component to the game. While As Dusk Falls doesn’t reinvent games with interactive stories, it brings fresh ideas and then skillfully executes them. The good German synchronization also gives the game added value in this country and the atmosphere is accompanied by a pleasant soundtrack. Unfortunately, the art style didn’t convince me until the end, even though I know how much effort went into the development. In the end it’s probably a matter of taste. A wonderful game that I think should be experienced first in multiplayer with friends. An interactive drama you really don’t want to miss this summer!