Rating: 
Summary: Story interesting - game design flunks
Review: As a "seasoned" adventure gamer, this one disappointed me greatly. I cannot recall when I last played a game that required me to WRITE with pen and paper, about every clue in the game. Most central objects cannot be inventoried so you can revisit them at leasure, but you have to walk back to the place you found them, and recheck things. A waste of time and effort - the plotline should be finding things and clueing them together, not how well you managed to write all words down, excatly as written in the game.I must admit I didn't finish the game. I don't have patience for that. I got tired, that clicking on a door won't open it, unless you click excatly on the little spot around the door-knob put aside for this excat function, and the constant turning around to see everything - no wide-angle view when you stood a few pases back. The storyline sounds interesting, and the spooky atmosphere in the game, is great and chilling. But the composition of the game has a long way yet to come.
Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Game!
Review: Dark Fall is the best adventure game I've played in years. The story is outstanding and the puzzles are wonderfully challenging. You really get a sense of accomplishment when you finish this game. The graphics are not stunning, and the navigation is good old point-n-click. But neither of these detracts from the enjoyment of the game. In fact, the designers have created one of the creepiest game environments that I've ever played. The sound effects and animations should definitely run some chills up your spine, as they did for me. The best part of the game is the detailed, coherent story that unfolds as you play. The designers really did their homework to make each clue, document, and puzzle come together to tell the story. Other reviewers have compared this game to "Amber: Journeys Beyond". Dark Fall is similar to "Amber", but much better. The puzzles remind me a lot of "Black Dahlia" and the story is similar to "Blackstone Chronicles" and "Morpheus". If you like adventure games with challenging puzzles and a great story to pull the puzzles together, you will really enjoy "Dark Fall"!
Rating: 
Summary: Spooky, yet frustrating.
Review: Dark Fall provides a spooky atmosphere using great sound effects and voice acting. However, unless the player is detail-oriented and willing to collect perhaps three times as much information as is needed to solve the game, frustration may ensue.
Clues to exorcise the haunted train station hotel are scattered deeply, often in creative contexts (sound, music, diagrams, coded text). What I found most wearisome was not knowing whether a particular discovery would help solve any of the puzzles.
Some elements were clever, but not well-used: psychic goggles that illuminate crucial clues but which only worked in a few locations. The in-game help from a deceased spirit similarly only worked at a few points during the game.
The point-and-click Myst style of travel is quite dated by today's game standards. Unlike the Myst series, Dark Fall has no face-to-face interaction with characters. I also found the ending, as others have mentioned, to be underwhelming.
While this game creates a scary ambiance within a deeply woven plot, the solutions to puzzles were often overly detailed and sometimes tedious (e.g., try up to 24 combinations of button clicks, without a clue). Since it received 4/5 stars overall, I bought it at Amazon. However, there may be some ratings inflation here---gaming magazine reviews were much lower for Dark Fall and other games that have received high ratings here, including Silent Hill 3, Blair Witch 3, and the scintillating Britney's Dance Beat.
Rating:
Summary: Not bad...for the price
Review: Darkfall: The Journal was a decent little game. I expected to be a lot more scared than I was, though. Here are a few issues:
1 - Too short. I was able to finish the entire game in two afternoon/evenings of gameplay.
2 - Extensive note-taking required. In some parts there was so much information to write down, I did screen prints to save myself from writer's cramp.
3 - Since the game revolves around finding the hotspot, which may or may not be on a particular screen, the game becomes a tedious exercise in clicking all over each screen, trying to find the elusive hotspots. Some critical hotspots are practically invisible and easy to miss.
4 - The "Load" and "Save" buttons are right next to each other. If you cancel out of the "Load" dialog, it will load the last save game anyway. At one point I wanted to save but accidentally hit load. I cancelled out but it still loaded my last save, causing me to lose several hours of gameplay.
5 - One of the games great aspects is character development. You spend the whole game getting to know these people and gathering clues, building up to what you expect will be a grand finale. However, the ending is very lackluster. All these people you worked the whole game to help, simply disappear after a quick "thank you" from one of them.
For the price I paid, it wasn't too bad, but it ended up being somewhat of a let-down.
Rating: 
Summary: AAAGGGHHH!!!! TOO MUCH READING!
Review: Do NOT buy this game if you don't like to read! There's tons of letters and documents that you have to read to progress. My brother only played for five minuets before he gave it to me.
EXAMPLE OF LOTS OF REAEDING: Go into a room, read two long letters. Go into the next room here's a book read six pages, oh look here's another one, read five more. Here's a room with a computer, spend an hour and a half reading all the information on that. (And I'm not kidding about that hour and a half bit either! I was loosing my mind.)Here's reception, read all the notes in the pigeon holes, go into the office, read another long letter in here. Go into the kitchen find four more notes and a complaints book to read... Do I need to go on, bcause I can?
Also keep a pen and notepad handy. Believe me you need them. For some reasion this game doesn't keep notes, which I can't understand because you really need them. I had to start again after hours of reading because I got so confused and fustraite I had to get a pen and paper!
The graphics aren't exactly state of the art either. But I didn't let this put me off. I started the game three days ago and I'm pretty far in. I suddenly found myself stuck after solving several of the puzzles, unable to continue until I found items I could pick up. But I never found them after going into all the rooms for the millionth time.
After I found the night vishion goggles that let me talk to the ghosts in some of the rooms I again found FUSTREATION! You have to type questions instead of having a set number you can pick from. The ghosts wouldn't answer the ones they didn't "Understand" and when they did all I got was "Go away" or "Mind your own business". Big help that was. Also when I was promted to use them in one room, I couldn't select them!!
I have now given up on this game and refuse to go back. You should abandon it too before you consider dipping into your pocket.
Rating:
Summary: Best Game I've Played All Year
Review: For gamers who love pure first person adventure, _Dark Fall_ dishes up some of the best that the genre has to offer. With a spooky atmosphere, engaging story, absorbing puzzles and great sound and graphics, _Dark Fall_ will probably keep you playing far into the night -- but you might not want to be alone. Your brother, an architect, is designing a resort and club to take the place of an old hotel and train station. In an opening movie, you receive a phone message asking you to come to the site as strange things are happening. When you arrive, your brother has disappeared and the place is deserted. You soon find out that the old Dowerton Inn has a history of disappearances. As you explore the hotel and station you uncover the frightening story behind these happenings. Soon enough it becomes apparent that it's up to you to put a stop to whatever it is that's going on. Originally published by an independent designer, _Dark Fall_ is a treat to play. The graphics are wonderful and detailed. The sound is mainly f/x replete with spooky voices just beyond intelligible, giving you the sense that, though you are alone, you may find otherwise at any minute. The interface is very simple and easy to use, allowing you to get caught up in the story. I found the pace of this game ideal. Although there are numerous locations to explore, you never get the sense that you are wandering around looking at things to no apparent purpose; there is always some information to be collected or a puzzle to solve. There is a nice variety to the puzzles: some inventory, some mechanical, some sound and a lot of putting information from difference locations together to come up with solutions. The inventory is minimal, which I appreciated; I'm a bit tired of games where you collect forty-eleven different pieces of inventory, many of which you use only once. Most of _Dark Fall's_ inventory has multiple uses. Once you have all the pieces you need, the puzzles are relatively simple and straight forward. There is no need for a walkthrough or strategy guide. If you get stuck, the game includes a built-in hint feature that is nicely presented as part of the plot. There were a few places where you got close-up views of things for no apparent reason and a few things you could interact with that were merely entertaining, rather than adding to the story or helping you solve any puzzle, but these did not detract from the overall experience. There are no timed puzzles, no mazes and you can't die, although you can be quite frightened at times. _Dark Fall_ reminded me quite a bit of AMBER, but I found it better thought-out and more engaging. It's also somewhat longer; I took about twenty hours to finish it. I'm looking forward to the sequel.
Rating:
Summary: Creepy Tale Filled with Riveting Puzzles
Review: I adore mystery/puzzle games and Dark Fall was right up my alley. With a go-at-your own pace, spooky ambience and puzzles with integrated solutions, this game kept me on the edge of my seat--I have to admit, when I reached the closing puzzles, I was tempted to save the game because I was too creeped out to continue! Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: One of worst games I have ever played.............
Review: I am not able to find words befitting this game.A game is supposed to give us some fun ,pass our time ...This game sucks in every aspect.After roaming around the hotel and station for an hour I concluded that there is nothing in there...(You cannot find a single person (or a thing) in this game...you and you all along).It is not scary (for guys who love scary kicks...).Then I went through a walkthrough and found out that the entire game based on some poetic lines or something WHICH CANNOT BE FOUND without a walkthrough.For example we have to find a line in a book in page 21...the funny thing there will be n number of things will be in the room.I do accept that certain level of difficulty must be associated with these things...but they should be rational in the sense...And not the least the entire game was written in Macromedia then you can imagine....
Save your $$$$$$$$ ..........
Rating:
Summary: How about a good scare??
Review: I bought Dark Fall from the man who created it, Jonathan Boakes, before Dreamcatcher Games realized it was a treasure and agreed to produce it for adventure game fans in the United States. I not only wasn't disappointed; I found one of my top ten games of all time (and I started playing games in college when Zork was a new text adventure).
The game is set in England. You receive a call from your brother and he needs help. He tends to dabble in the supernatural for a living, but you don't believe in that nonsense...right? When you arrive, the train station and beautiful but somewhat rundown art deco hotel are deserted. Except for the ghosts and the voices that may speak to you from nowhere. You may be exploring a room and find that a shadow has passed in front of you, but turn around to find nothing. There are clues in the old hotel and train station, and you've found your brother's equipment, right where he left it before...well, before something spoke to him and knew his name. Now it knows your name, too, and you have to solve the mystery before it finds you. Good luck, and remember to play with the lights off if you're brave enough. But you might want to be sure you aren't in the house alone!
Rating:
Summary: Waste Of Time
Review: I bought this game based on some of the positive reviews I found here on Amazon, but I, too, ended up being extremely dissapointed. I've played many games of this genre and I found this one to be, well, distracting to say the least. The story line is ok, the mood of the game is excellent. I could even deal with the "walking" (clicking to move one step at a time), but most of the puzzles have absolutely nothing to do with the story line. I enjoy games with puzzles that actually move the plot line forward. In Dark Fall, you are just solving a lot of puzzles just for the sake of solving them. There doesn't seem to be any continuity or flow throughout this game. If you don't write down EVERYTHING you see, you might just miss an important clue...but then you're also left spending all your time writing down stupid numbers from every business card and menu you come across. Aggrivating and a waste of time! I actually reached the ending scene before I collected all the clues....so I had to go back and figure out a whole bunch of annoying "clues", some that actually lead to something, but most lead to dead ends. Oh, and your little "helper" - Timothy - is really no help at all.
If you want a good game that is actually fun to play, try Syberia, or any of the Myst games. Don't waste your time or money on this one.
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