The Black Mirror PC Game Review: Dark, Twisty and a Hot Mess of an Ending

A journey into darkness.

I've played my fair share of retro point-and-click adventure games, so when I peeped moody aesthetic screenshots of this cult classic 2003 horror adventure from Czech developer Future Games, I wondered how it'd slipped past my radar. 

One Halloween Steam sale whirlwind later, and I was transported to Black Mirror, the remote ancestral Gordon family manor in Suffolk, 1981. After a 12-year absence, protagonist Samuel Gordon is drawn reluctantly back by his grandfather's mysterious death. Dismissed as suicide by everyone else, Samuel is convinced otherwise and begins his own informal investigation. This leads – naturally, given their sizable wealth and gothic English estate – to the revelation of an ancient family curse. As Samuel confronts the darkness that shrouds his family history, more bizarre, unexplained deaths gather pace around the manor, and he must race to break the curse before Black Mirror claims another victim.

The most striking thing about Black Mirror – and what drew me to it in the first place – is its lushly detailed pre-rendered environments. I strongly appreciate this hand-drawn style of background, allowing for more charming, realised worlds, over fully 3D environments, especially when 90s and noughties game engines aren't quite equal to the task (*cough*, Gabriel Knight 3. 3D just 'cause you can isn't the asset developers seem to think it is). The main drawback to this is when 3D character models don't quite integrate into the scenery; the models aren't glaringly out of place here, but the game doesn't offer anti-aliasing to smooth out the rough edges and the characters' oddly pipe-limbed, clay-like forms and plodding movements detract from the realism a tad.

The game boasts 150 locations (though I suspect this refers to screens rather than distinct locations), and they're a treat to behold. From the imposing gothic manor itself framed by skeletal trees and portentous skies and the grand, ornately decorated rooms within to the Tudor-style houses and pretty old-worldly charm of local village Willow Creek, Black Mirror excels at atmosphere. The settings are also cast in dramatic light and shadow and set off by atmospheric effects including rain, fog and storms. Meanwhile, realistic animated touches like leaves rustling in the breeze and blackbirds circling the spires and turrets of the manor lend to the game's tense ambience. As I've mentioned before, after almost two years of Covid-related travel restrictions, immersive game worlds like these soothe the caged adventurer's soul.

Though set in the 80s, many of the locations feel like stepping much further into the past.

Black Mirror builds tension well, even slipping in some surprising little scares when examining seemingly innocent objects, like a memorable sanity-questioning moment with a wood chipper in the first chapter. On first inspection, Samuel finds it smeared with blood, but after he returns, it's gone. Did someone clean it off, or did Samuel imagine the whole thing? Subtle, but effective. 

All this is set to appropriately spooky – and occasionally heart-stopping – music, with moments of restrained quiet – like the eerie stillness of the manor punctuated only by an ominous ticking clock.

While this may have gone against the creators' intentions, I would've enjoyed more lighter moments, such as a little quintessentially British dark humour and maybe even a few cosy retreats, to offset the brooding character of the game. In short, I craved more contrast; as well as providing relief from the menacing atmosphere, this could've made the horror all the more effective. As things stand, this is quite a relentlessly dark game, especially given the turn of events towards the end (more on which later). 

It might be the 80s, but this can't be compliant with hygiene regulations.

 

This lack of texture is made more apparent by the flat, stilted voice acting; the highly popular German version, on the other hand, puts the English release to shame – German Samuel is voiced by David Nathan, a voice actor known for regularly dubbing Johnny Depp and Christian Bale in international film releases. In contrast, in the English version, Samuel 'I must go now' Gordon manages to give players a more wooden performance than Keanu Reeves' iconic turn as Jonathan Harker in Bram Stoker's Dracula. 

The dialogue isn't much more lively – or particularly helpful, for that matter. While the player can choose to lie, this has no real impact, nullifying any sense of player agency (especially given later events), and interactions lack emotional punch. All of this makes it difficult to form attachments to characters, rendering Samuel an unrelatable lead. This is a shame; his homecoming posed a fantastic opportunity to explore his memories and relationships with family members in more depth.

LOVE the drapes.

All of the focus rests, instead, on the central mystery and Samuel's ensuing quest to seek five sacred keys to seal the hell-portal beneath Black Mirror (given the task at hand, his lack of relish over proceedings is admittedly somewhat justified). This involves a variety of enjoyable and sufficiently challenging though generally logical puzzles, with a few frustrating instances of pixel hunting (at one point I'd neglected to check a doorframe in a bedroom that concealed an essential key. There was nothing about it that warranted any special attention, and without consulting a guide I might well be wandering the halls of Black Mirror engaging in awkward unproductive conversations to this day). 

One notorious puzzle bizarrely assumes knowledge of the zodiac symbols, which must be placed in order in that beloved adventure game staple, the sliding-block puzzle. Players have found this puzzle so exasperating that there are numerous forum threads on the topic and even requests for post-zodiac puzzle save states just so they can skip it altogether (I had to look up a table showing what each one represents). Simply providing an in-game reference for these symbols would've saved a lot of grief. 

The sliding-block zodiac puzzle that launched a thousand tears.

There's also an unwinnable state (if you waste a bullet shooting the lock in the mine you won't be able to defeat the wolf outside); given that this is an isolated incident, this seems to be an example of unforgivingly flawed puzzle design rather than a decision to emulate hardcore adventure games of yore. Thankfully, I'd caught wind of this one ahead of time, so I didn't run into any dead ends – though I did die in a number of the game's creative 'game over' scenarios (eyeball skewer, anyone?).

The narrative culminates in a shocking twist (warning: the following contains spoilers. If you want to avoid these, retreat now. I repeat, retreat now) – but does it land? The revelation that Samuel is the true, albeit unconscious, killer genuinely took me surprise, a successful feat for any murder mystery, and worked well in that it was foreshadowed by Samuel's nightmares and the literal writing on the wall in the sanatorium.

It's moments like these that the German Johnny Depp voice dub would be strongly appreciated.

However, my surprise wasn't simply due to clever misdirection; the reveal doesn't quite hold up to scrutiny. One of the bodies was entirely drained of blood and another was torn apart, suggesting supernatural or superhuman intervention – something the game never offers an explanation for – and one of the murders would've required Samuel to travel from Wales to Suffolk and back (a more than 10-hour roundtrip) on a night when the player has him up past midnight tombraiding. This left me feeling almost as scammed as the time I discovered the true killer in Heavy Rain was [Shelby] when I knew damn well they couldn't have killed that clockmaker guy in the office in the space of a few seconds with their partner just a few feet away. *Nostrils flare* But I digress...

Plot holes aside, there are some dangling plot threads – a photo of Samuel's wife, Cathrin, who died in a house fire, sits prominently on his dresser, hinting at some Jane Eyre-worthy exposition on Samuel's past, but by the end the player is none the wiser. While I found out later that this is the subject of one of the sequels, it feels strange to drop such a dramatic plot point in near the start without any follow-up. 

None of these issues was as maddening as the unsatisfying ending, however, when, much like sanity-challenged Uncle James, the game pretty much loses it. The whole basis of the narrative and motivation for playing is uncovering the mystery of the Gordon family curse – and ultimately breaking it, saving any innocent victims caught up in the whole sorry mess, the Gordon bloodline and Samuel's own soul.

While the curse origins are discovered, Samuel ultimately succumbs to the same curse that killed his grandfather. In the process, he deals some major collateral damage to unsuspecting manor-adjacent bystanders and renders all preceding game actions somewhat hollow. But then Samuel's characterisation is so flat, you'd be forgiven for not really caring about his self-imposed spiky-fenced fate (which also, quite literally, kills off any motivation for following the series into its sequels). 

Verdict: Overall, Black Mirror is polished on the surface (especially for a game almost 20 years old now), just as long as you don't look too closely. Its worst sin, for me, is that it lacks the vital factor that sets other greater adventure games, like Gabriel Knight and Broken Sword, apart – characters that feel real and sympathetic. However, if you can suspend your critical judgment long enough to submit to an experience that makes up for flaccid characterisation with zany plot turns, you're in for an effectively atmospheric, absorbing and twisty ride. The box art does promise a 'Journey into Darkness' – and by this metric, at least, it delivers.

Score: ★★★☆☆

'I must go now.'

If you liked this, please consider fuelling my next post by slinging a cup of coffee my way.

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