Blackwell Deception

Wadjet Eye Games is a small New York studio comprised of one Dave Gilbert, his wife, and one game loving canine. Founded back in 2006, this studio released their latest title, Blackwell Deception, on the 13th of October for £6.99, publishing it to Steam on the 13th of this month along with the 3 games that precede it.

Blackwell, is a series of point and click adventures, that tries to emulate the adventure games from the good old days of DoS, or those games I had on my old Atari Falcon when I was a child. There is a surprising balance, or misbalance, between assets for this game, running natively in a resolution of 640×400, with no options to run in windowed mode or change the resolution, while at the same time surprising me with voice acting. Since this isn’t the type of game that moves the camera with the mouse, windowed mode is kinda expected of the game, especially from an indie production. Then again, in windowed mode 640×400 becomes astonishingly small. Perhaps the developers could have at least upped the resolution to 800×600, or maybe even 1024×600 for some widescreen support.

I must say though, Blackwell truly is a time warp. The art is far from impressive, but that’s really what makes it what it is. The sound effects were what I can only describe as “cool”, I particularly liked the “swooshy” sound the ghost makes when he goes through things. “Oh hey, an old-school puzzle! Well now, that’s obviously a combination hint, and when I put it with this clue… I have a password! Now… Uh, notebook? No?” Suffice to say I was tempted to scurry around looking for paper, but opted for trying to memorise the order instead. I think access to a notebook would be helpful in-game, but it’s not exactly a big problem. Nothing that a desk full of paper doesn’t fix, and face it, almost everyone’s desk is covered in paper.

There is a very noir-esque soundtrack to this game, with some jazzy tracks thrown in for good measure, but then that’s what you would expect from a game that has puzzles and an air of mystery to it. I was however surprised by the presence of voice acting, especially considering the low resolution, lack of settings, and old fashioned graphics. Admittedly I found myself chuckling to myself every time the ghost spoke, and a certain expression appeared on the screen, but hey, you need something to lighten the mood in a game like this.

Unfortunately, the Steam overlay turned out to be this game’s worst enemy; something that wouldn’t’ have mattered if there was a windowed mode might I point out. Not only is everything ludicrously big because of the game’s low resolution, but I had to restart the game three times after I had used the overlay and was unable to interact with the game afterwards. That kid’s, is why you save regularly!

Still, the game is fun, and follows one of those story-patterns where each chapter doesn’t seem to relate to the previous one. I just wish the resolution was higher and the bugs to be fixed with the steam overlay. Ah well, you can’t have everything.