[While the new Indie Royale game bundle that we co-created with Desura is running, we’ll be profiling each of the five games featured in it, giving our honest opinion on the pluses and minuses of each title. Today, we check out Blackwell Unbound, the prequel to the Blackwell Trilogy – a retro-tastic adventure game franchise with a supernatural twist. ]
Replaying a game you love can be a bit like Russian Roulette. Five times out of six, it’s fine. You take a walk down Memory Lane and leave smiling with nostalgia. It’s that sixth time I’m worried. What if I shoot myself? What if I play it and find it lacking? It’d be like finding out Santa Claus was a figment of our collective imagination all over again. Fortunately, this wasn’t the case with Wadjet Eye Games’ Blackwell Trilogy. Like Marilyn Monroe and the Mona Lisa, certain things are timeless.
While it probably have made a little more sense to start with the progenitor of the point & click adventure game series, I couldn’t resist but open with Blackwell Unbound, the second game in the franchise. Why am I doing this? Two words: Lauren Blackwell. For those unacquainted with this charming, chain-smoking medium, Lauren Blackwell is Rosangela’s (she’s the protagonist of the other three games) aunt. Unlike Rosangela, she’s not particularly awkward. Sassy, outspoken and surprisingly comfortable in her skin for someone in her line of work (she could just be too jaded to care), Lauren also has one other thing that Rosangela does not: Joey Mallone on a leash.
(To provide a little background for those who just got here, Joey Mallone is the smarmy, shameless, ‘one-step-away-from-a-slap’ ghost of a 1920s mobster and Lauren Blackwell’s spirit guide. And while the norm is usually a tribal animal of some sorts, Joey is infinitely preferable to a giant eagle.)
As you might have gathered already, she’s all kinds of awesome (if embittered and mildly dedicated to the pursuit of lung cancer). But what’s even more awesome is the game itself. set in New York 1973, Blackwell Unbound drops us straight into the middle of the action or, in this case, the lack thereof. It is late at night and Lauren is at the end of her ropes. All but two of her tabloid leads were nothing but over hyped garbage. She’s soaked, furious and intent on finishing her umpteenth cigarette before she begins moving again. In short, this is where we get an introduction to the game’s primary gimmick (you can switch between Joey and Lauren when you play) and the dialogue system.
Unlike most traditional adventure games, you won’t get to choose a specific response here. Instead, you’re given options like ‘play the innocent’ or ‘use force’, something that offers a certain measure of unpredictability to the whole thing. It works surprisingly well, all things taken into consideration. The conversations never feel awkward at all. The situations that the characters find themselves in, on the other hand, are a different story entirely. Lauren’s petulance and Joey’s clumsy attempts to repair things in the opening sequence will make you smirk. If you’ve ever been in a relationship with someone, you probably would have seen this at least once.
But Blackwell Unbound isn’t just about pseudo-marital comedy. You will also be investigating the deaths of a lonely ghost of a saxophone-playing street performer and a haughty, infuriating specter of a woman in a construction site. That’s all I’m going to say about the main plot. The rest is up to you to discover. All I will say that it is worth the trouble. Blackwell Unbound is dark without being melodramatic. It is a story that will yank on your heart strings but not one that leave you certain that Dave Gilbert parades through New York city in a black cape. Like the rest of the Blackwell games, there’s something believable about this one, something almost uncomfortably unfamiliar. Of course, it also helps that Blackwell Unbound is rife with excellent writing, sharp wit and reasonably strong characters. The one thing I did not like about this game was that the supporting cast occasionally felt flat, as though they were tacked on to provide exposition and nothing more.
Asides from that little quibble, however, there was nothing I found wanting about Blackwell Unbound. I liked it the first time I played it and I like it even now. In all seriously, go check it out. If you enjoy the idea of detective noir with a supernatural twist, of jazz music and New York at night, you’re going to enjoy this one.
Official website here, and you can buy it as part of Indie Royale’s ‘X-Mas Bundle’ for the next few days.
*goes shopping for black cape*
So far I have really been enjoying this game.
The blackwell thingies are amongst the very, very very, very very very very very best adventure games I’ve played (and I have played quite a few since the 80s). Just saying.
Lauren also has the most bland, bored, terrible voice actress I’ve ever heard and a terrible shuffling walk animation. Coming to her off the first game was a slap in the face that killed my interest in the series completely.
Sounds a bit melodramatic Deep, unless Mr. Gilbert literally slapped you around while you tried to play the game. Then I think I know why you bailed on the rest of the series.
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