Dark Mirror

Hello and welcome to the review of Dark Mirror, a short 15-20 minutes narrative horror game whose purpouse is just to tell you a horror story. This was made for the 2013 All Hallows' event, so I will take in account (as I always do) that this is a game made for a contest in few days so it has not years of development behind.

Visually the game does not stand out very much: characters are made with classic RTP, and also the environments aren't particularly original and don't stand out still it's not bad, and the lightning is used well. Unfortunately the maps are a bit of bland and feels empty, not that there are issues or problems with them.
Music and sounds are ok, most is RTP but there are some custom pieces, all pretty good, I mean it soon gets repetitive but at least it's clearly far better that using just RTPs!


I'd rather *drink* a Bloody Mary!

The gameplay is also not so interesting: it's a totally linear adventure, but again the aim is just to tell a horror story creating a nice dark atmosphere but without giving too much freedom to the player. It's a story, an interactive adventure so no combat- to tell the truth there are some bits of challenges, like a small puzzle and some scenes in which you have to hide. Probably these were the two parts I liked most of the game since they are the most exciting and interesting sections.

The strong point of this game is clearly the story: the writing is good, very good and also the dialogues are well written. Nice. Overall the plot is not very original, it's rather classic. People play a Bloody Mary game (and Bloody Mary is immediately introduced in h), and unsurprisingly something bad happens. It's a bit of a clichè but it's well written and in the end I liked the story up to the ending (that I liked, I must admit that! Simple and short but it works!).
Characters are ok even if are all quite similar both for appearance and personality, anyway the story is pretty short so there's not much to tell about them.


Oh no, oh no, oh nouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!!!


Final Verdict
This is a small game and there is not much to do, so there is not much to say about it either. It look rather average, and it is an average game, but not too bad or buggy or filled with errors, so it's still a discrete adventure or a nice game for 15 minutes, depending on your expectations. Nothing more and nothing less, but surely nothing terrible or great (I've nothing against the use of Rtps but anyway the final result isn't particularly memorable). Just average, but may be enjoyable nonenthless if you like a good, classic (maybe too classic!) horror story. This gets a 3/5 from me.