Black Mirror II

About Black Mirror II

Black Mirror II was made by the German studio Cranberry Production and came out in German in 2009, then in English in 2010 (in North America as Black Mirror II: Reigning Evil). Future Games made the first one. Cranberry took the series over here, and Black Mirror III followed in 2011. Steam and GOG sell it today for Windows, published by THQ Nordic.

It is 1993. Darren Michaels, a student from Boston, is staying with his mother in the coastal town of Biddeford, Maine, and working for an unpleasant photo shop owner. Then a young Englishwoman named Angelina walks in, and his summer looks up. Not for long. A stranger starts following them, someone in town dies, and Angelina flees home. Darren's nightmares grow worse. A note she leaves behind sends him across the Atlantic to the English village of Willow Creek, and to the ruins of Black Mirror Castle and the Gordon family, whose curse ended in disaster a decade before.

It is a classic third-person point-and-click in six long chapters, with more than 100 locations and some 40 characters. You talk your way through topic cards, collect and combine objects, read letters and journals, and solve mechanical puzzles. You can die out of nowhere, but there's an autosave right before. Normal mode leaves every puzzle to you; easy mode adds hints and lets you skip puzzles after a few tries.

The horror is a slow, rising one: a pleasant seaside town that turns sinister, murders and bodies, a stalker in the fog, crypts and burnt ruins, and the old family legend from the first game. Critics found it long and handsome (Metacritic has it at 71), Adventure Classic Gaming calling it a sequel that rivals the original, while some Steam players note it is more dark mystery than outright horror. You don't need the first game. Knowing it does make the ending land harder.

Length varies wildly. GameFAQs players say roughly 18 hours. Adventure Classic Gaming's reviewer counted 42 or so puzzles and needed over 40.

How to play Black Mirror II

1. Click to walk Darren around; double-click an exit or hotspot to go straight there.
2. Right-click hotspots to look closer, and press H or space to show every hotspot in the scene.
3. Click on people to talk, and go through every topic card for clues.
4. Collect items and use them from the inventory on the world or on each other to solve puzzles.
5. Use the postcard in your inventory to travel back to places you have already been.
6. Choose Easy mode if you want hints and the option to skip puzzles; you can change it at any time.

Tips

• Turn on subtitles; music and sound sometimes drown out the dialogue.
• Talk to everyone about every topic: the game is linear and often waits for one conversation you missed.
• Use the hotspot key in every new scene; small objects are easy to miss.
• Save often; a sudden death is saved just before it, but a manual save lets you go back further.

Questions