Square Enix has announced that Sand Sailor Studio’s dystopian puzzle-platformer, Black The Fall, is now available. Black The Fall plunges players into a deeply atmospheric communist dystopia, in which they must solve a series of puzzles to survive in a world determined to keep them trapped in the system.
Played out in a striking environment, the game’s lead ‘Black’ intends to escape; sneaking through numerous stages past cameras trained on his every step as he tries to escape the system that is keeping him and his fellow citizens enslaved.
Cristian Diaconescu, Creative Director at the Bucharest-based Sand Sailor Studio, said:
“With Black The Fall we really want to capture the feeling of what it was like to live in the communist state, and have been inspired by the first-hand experiences of our families. The world Black lives in might be fictional, but the system trying to beat him down is as bleak and oppressive as it has been in many countries around the world.
Romania only broke free of the shackles of the Soviet bloc less than 30 years ago, so for many people living in the country today the memories are still fresh. We decided to take those stories and illustrate just what it was like to live within a restrictive regime in a game.
That means players have to make use of the kind of tactics people who survived that era mastered – manipulation and stealth. The intentionally melancholic atmosphere also has a role to play here, and that’s something we’ve rendered in detail through image and sound. We’ve put no text or dialogue into the game at all – the story is told through experiences in play.”
As stated by Diaconescu, Black The Fall directly touches on life in Romania under Communist dictator Nicolae Ceau?escu in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. Its weighty subject matter sets the game apart from other puzzle platformers.
Phil Elliott, Director of Community & Indie Development at Square Enix Collective, added:
“Black The Fall was one of the first games that featured on the Collective feedback platform back in 2014, and was among the first Kickstarter campaigns we supported too. So it’s with great delight we’re working with the team at Sand Sailor Studio on releasing the game as well – both the game, and the team behind it, have come a very long way in that time, and we’re really looking forward to seeing people enjoy the experience they’ve created.”
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John is the founder and Editor in Chief at DSOGaming. He is a PC gaming fan and highly supports the modding and indie communities. Before creating DSOGaming, John worked on numerous gaming websites. While he is a die-hard PC gamer, his gaming roots can be found on consoles. John loved – and still does – the 16-bit consoles, and considers SNES to be one of the best consoles. Still, the PC platform won him over consoles. That was mainly due to 3DFX and its iconic dedicated 3D accelerator graphics card, Voodoo 2. John has also written a higher degree thesis on the “The Evolution of PC graphics cards.”
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