Dark Fall is a genuinely good game but only up until its half way point. Mainly because of three things that are not strictly the fault of the game but of its age. A. the game really does not setup the base premise of hunting for symbols whatsoever. Well at least not ingame. You see the manual basically gives the player a complete walkthrough for the first five minutes of the game which clearly sets up this particular point. However in game the first indication that those symbols are in any way relevant to the plot is not really set up until a midway/last third of the game. Meaning that unless you read this mini walkthrough from the manual you will be running around the game like a headless chicken unsure of what are you even supposed to do. B. Pixel hunting. A staple of the genre which is however doubly egregious here as it often hinders critical points and locations not by being hard to find clickable spots but by requiring inputs in a specific order to work. C. No ingame notepad. A lot of details that you gather from texts earlier only come up an hour or so later, plus these often very specific numbers and inputs you have to memorize. So unless you keep written notes next to your computer, you better finish the game in one go or else you might end up seriously lost. These problems are kind of the hallmarks but considering how eager the game is to break genre conventions otherwise they feel very jarring. They hinder an otherwise excellent game from being truly amazing. They do not ruin the experience but they definitely make it less enjoyable.
