Dark Fall: Ghost Vigil

About Dark Fall: Ghost Vigil

Dark Fall: Ghost Vigil was made and published by Jonathan Boakes's studio, Darkling Room. It came out on Steam on 10 January 2020 and on GOG that February, years after the earlier Dark Fall games, and you don't need to have played those to follow it.

You are the newest member of the Oxford Paranormal Group, and this is your first all-night vigil. The venue is Harwood House, built in 1747 for Lord Harwood, whose young son died there of scarlet fever two years later. Owners came and went; it was a hotel, a maternity hospital and from 1968 a children's home called Shangri La, and it has stood empty for four decades. The group believes it is haunted by several entities, not one.

Your investigation starts in the attic as a closed-door experiment, then spreads through the house and the remains of the children's home. Remote ghost cams show other rooms, and your teammates reach you by message and walkie-talkie. You record EVP on a dictaphone, read the room with an EMF detector and a thermal camera, see through night vision, set out trigger objects, follow voices on the ghost box and ask questions on a Ouija board. Time slips carry you back into the house's past.

It plays the old-school way. Movement is click to a node, turn ninety degrees, click again, and saving is allowed anywhere. Much of the night is quiet work at the equipment, checking a room and finding nothing, and GameBoomers' reviewer said that's what made it feel like a real ghost hunt. The puzzles are where it gets hard. Some codes are randomised per player, some lean on music, and later there's a drone that gets into places you otherwise can't reach. Nobody dies and there are no action scenes.

The horror builds the way a real vigil does. The early hours bring orbs, flashes and sudden drops in temperature; after midnight things become, in the makers' word, unexplainable. Boakes used audio recorded during actual ghost hunts, and the game has a full voice cast and three endings. Expect a spooky, sad old house more than shocks.

It suits players who like the investigation side of ghost-hunting games such as Phasmophobia but want a single-player story to solve, and fans of Dark Fall: The Journal and British ghost stories.

How to play Dark Fall: Ghost Vigil

1. Buy Dark Fall: Ghost Vigil on Steam or GOG and install it on Windows.
2. Pick up your walkie-talkie and gadgets, then begin your vigil in the attic and set up the experiments you are given.
3. Use the gadgets, EVP recorder, EMF detector, thermal and night-vision cameras, to find where activity is strongest.
4. Record and classify the evidence you capture, and follow the clues the ghost box and Ouija board give you.
5. Explore Harwood House and the old children's home to learn who haunts them and reach one of the endings.

Tips

• Check the ghost cams often; activity in another room can point you where to go next.
• Play with headphones: much of the evidence is in what you hear.
• Classify each piece of evidence carefully, as the game rewards choosing the right type of haunting.
• Keep notes or screenshots of what you read. Some puzzle codes are randomised, so a walkthrough's numbers may not match yours.
• Listen to the walkie-talkie chatter when you are stuck. Your teammates often hint at where to go next.
• Keep a save from near the end, so you can go back and see the other endings.

Questions