As Dusk Falls review – multiplayer drama

metro.co.uk:

A new Life Is Strange style narrative game, from one of the designers of Heavy Rain, may be the best written video game of the year.

Video games have a problem with nuance, or rather the lack of it. Despite huge progress in graphical fidelity and surround sound, the majority of games still derive their challenge and gameplay either from gun violence or some sort of kinetic activity, whether sports, driving or farming. Even after all that progress the thing games do worst is simulate human relationships.

One way developers of less action-orientated games mitigate that is to limit the range of interaction you’re allowed, usually through multiple choice options. That gives the sensation of freedom without needing to give your console or PC the impossible job of pretending to be a real person. It also means that their games’ plots tend to advance through a series of near-binary choices in a long decision tree, which is the starting point for As Dusk Falls.

Telling the story of a young girl’s childhood trauma and the knock-on effect that has on her life, it starts innocuously enough with a family’s road trip across America in search of a new beginning. The dad’s been fired from his job for an infraction he didn’t cause, and his wife’s been offered a tenured professorship in a different state, so off they go, with grandpa hitching a ride in the back of the car.

After a car accident in the middle of the Arizona desert, they find themselves caught up in a terrifying hostage drama in a one-horse town, with its own dark undercurrents that are initially invisible, at least to some of the characters you’re getting to know. Splitting your time between the dad, Vince, and Jay, the youngest and most reluctant of the hostage takers, you