‘As Dusk Falls’ Review: Interactive Drama That Lacks Direction

Intertwining the fates of two families across two timelines, As Dusk Falls is an exploration of how terrible trauma might see enemies ally together and drive insurmountable wedges between relatives, and how the impact of these choices imprison them in their states, unless you change their course. It’s an impressive bit of narrative design from developer INTERIOR/NIGHT and that’s about where the good stuff ends. 

Take a look at the trailer here:

It’s 1998 and the sun beats down on the road. Vince is driving on Route 66, ferrying his wife Michelle, their daughter Zoe and his father Jim to a new start in St Louis. The air is prickly — no one wants to be here, in spite of soft smiles and words of encouragement. Vince has recently lost his job working in an airport when an accident claimed the life of a colleague and severely injured another, and the airline pinned the blame on Vince. He’s fought back though, and there’s a juicy settlement on offer to sow his mouth shut, but no matter how you look at it, he’ll never work on planes again. 

Zoe, clutching a toy owl for comfort, has had to leave her friends behind and Michelle is struggling with keeping spirits high and the slightly sarcastic comments from her father-in-law. You’ll learn that Jim hasn’t been in Vince’s life at all, not until now. A devastating diagnosis led him to reconnect with his son and meet his granddaughter, however, there’s no getting around the fact that Vince and Jim are more like acquaintances than family. 

Suddenly, Vince yanks the wheel to avoid a crash. The car spins out onto the dust and oil pools in a sticky puddle. Luckily, they’re not too far from the Desert Dream Motel, near the town of Two Rock, where they decide to hole up and repair the car in the morning. 

Earlier that day, a trio of boys in masks break into a picture-perfect suburban house, a safe code tucked in the youngest’s jeans pocket. This is Tyler, Dale, and Jay Holt. Impoverished and with a bone to pick with a power-hungry sheriff, robbing him specifically is the sweet satisfaction of killing two birds with one stone — they get the cash to pay off a dangerous debt and they stick it to the man who made their mother’s life miserable. 

Their plan goes awry when the sheriff’s disabled wife is in fact home and seizes the “help” button beside her bed when Jay walks into her bedroom looking for the safe. Sheriff Dante returns, is attacked by the boys, and the three go on the run, seeking refuge somewhere on Route 66. 

I imagine you have put two and two together and the Desert Dream becomes the stage for a hostage situation that spirals out of control as Jay, Dale, and Tyler as well as Jim, Vince, Michelle and the motel staff try to survive the night. Interlocking choices and determinant crossroads moments determine who trusts who and how far individuals are willing to go to get out of the motel alive. Then, there’s the time skip to 2012, when Zoe is grown up and trying to deal with the trauma of her childhood and whether there are things that should stay buried. 

Doesn’t this all sound enticing? Doesn’t this all sound like a rather good TV show? It is very like a TV show, really, as the gameplay is very easy and accessible for anybody who hasn't played a video game before. The scene plays out in painted freeze frames and the player has a selection of dialogue or action options to choose from within a generous time limit. If you hold on, sometimes there will be an extra option to say nothing or to stand up or something like that. 

While the characters aren’t controllable, the player uses the cursor to sweep over the environment to locate things to comment on or complete or investigate. There’s a lot of signposting when things are going to be significant for later on in the story and the consequences of these actions pop up with the crossroads motif. Even the quick time events are very lenient in terms of the time that they give the player to enact them, and while this might be easy for experienced gamers, I think that's a good idea for interested potential players who don't play games a lot but enjoy high stakes TV shows like Ozark or Breaking Bad.

But this is the thing that I'm tripping up on. TV doesn't look like freeze frames of illustrated expressions and actions. It’s all in real time and with real people. INTERIOR/NIGHT has animated the rest of the scene, such as doors opening, cars driving away and water flowing in the river. And I appreciate why they've done it, as it sets the game apart from others in this genre. There's the kind of fragmentary nature of memories where you remember the clunk of fridge door closing, but you might not remember exactly how someone was standing or how they crossed the room, or the frown on their face. 

Nevertheless, that staccato direction means that I don’t feel that much worry or concern when characters are in survival situations as my input into the storyline is channeled in a passive way. When one of the Holts died in a shootout, I thought, “oh, blimey,” and took another sip of my coffee. This is probably not the reaction that the developer intended. 

I don’t want to rag on this game because there are standout parts. One of these is the flow chart of all the possible choices and outcomes that could have occurred in each of the six chapters, showing yours lit up in blue or yellow and how many players also followed that same path. With all of this laid out, it gives you a proper appreciation for the amount of writing and the effort that’s gone into clicking all of these pieces together into a coherent course of action, as well as the curiosity to find out what are these other fates for these characters. The developer has had the foresight to know that not everyone’s going to be keen on replaying the entire thing, so there are specific points in the chart that you can select to play from and either overwrite or avoid saving over your current playthrough. 

Additionally, the game analyses your playstyle and assigns you attributes at the end of the chapters — bestowing badges based on different responses. You might get the “Loyal” trait because you stuck by your family, or you might get the “Quick Thinker” for picking options without delay. I felt seen by some of the conclusions that the game was drawing about me, I’ll say that much. 

As a narrative-heavy game that settles you in the director’s seat to drive these characters towards their respective resolutions, it feels like INTERIOR/NIGHT forgot to finish the story. I mean it genuinely, this game just stops. I sat in the main menu for about 20 minutes trying to work out if I had fenced myself into an abrupt ending or if there was a giant “continue” button in my blind spot. I went back to what I thought were pivotal decisions and chose the opposite to see if that would change the paths, and it didn’t. 

Without spoiling anything major, there’s a very important book that is discovered when the boys rob the sheriff’s house, and this causes the sheriff to make some morally questionable calls to retrieve that book at the expense of Vince and his family. That is mentioned a few times after the events of the Desert Dream and then is not shown in the flowchart of all the possible outcomes anywhere else in the story. If the developer has another couple of chapters planned to address these threads, fine, there’s just nothing to indicate that. So I have to assume that this is the ending and it’s not a good one. 

Pros: interesting art direction, accessibility options are well-thought out and allow new players to acclimatise to a controller, really cool to see the structure of the story at the end of the chapters

Cons: a troubling number of loose ends. Like a lot. Like a lot of stuff is literally left unexplained. And I imagine the art direction is likely to turn a fair few off

For fans of: Life Is Strange, Firewatch, Beyond: Two Souls

5/10: Average