Black Mirror III

About Black Mirror III

Black Mirror III was made by Cranberry Production, the studio behind Black Mirror II, and came out in 2011. It's also been sold as Black Mirror III: Final Fear and Black Mirror III: The Final Chapter. It closes the trilogy that began with The Black Mirror in 2003. Steam and GOG sell it for Windows, published by THQ Nordic, with English voices and seven other dubbed languages.

The game starts where Black Mirror II stops. In the English village of Willow Creek, Darren Michaels is handcuffed and held as the main suspect in a killing. He hardly reacts. After weeks in a cell he is suddenly let go, someone having paid his bail, but the nights bring no sleep, only visions of murder and death. With most of the village against him, Darren starts again to find out what has happened to him, what his nightmares mean and what is waiting in the crypts beneath Black Mirror Castle.

It's a classic third-person point-and-click spread over six chapters and an epilogue, with more than 100 locations and over 50 characters, and you alternate between two playable characters. You talk to the villagers and the police, collect and combine a large inventory, read old books and letters, and work through mechanical and logic puzzles. Conversations matter more than usual. The map won't open new places until you've dragged every fact out of someone, even when you already guessed it. A walking map picked up early lets you jump straight back to any place you've seen, and the diary in your inventory lists what the chapter still wants from you.

Expect a long, slow game. GOG puts the main story at about 13 hours, and GameSpot reckoned all the clicking on scenery pads a six or seven hour plot out to ten or twelve. Some inventory steps are pretty obscure. The logic puzzles are fairer, and a few can be skipped after enough failed tries if you turn that on in the options.

The horror is the trilogy's slow, gothic kind: foggy streets, a village where few people are about and fewer trust you, a cemetery and a morgue, ghosts in the woods, an exorcism, and the Gordon curse closing in. You can die, though the game saves itself just before. Adventure Gamers called it a satisfying ending to the trilogy, while GameSpot found it as chilling as the earlier games but slow and hard without a walkthrough. Play the first two games before this one. The story makes little sense on its own.

How to play Black Mirror III

1. Click to walk Darren around Willow Creek and to look at, take or use things.
2. Talk to the villagers and the police about every topic for clues.
3. Scroll the inventory bar at the bottom of the screen and use items on the world or on each other.
4. Open the walking map from the inventory to go straight back to a place you have already visited.
5. Solve the mechanical and logic puzzles. Some offer a skip after enough failed tries when that option is on.
6. Switch between the two playable characters when the story hands you both.

Tips

• Play The Black Mirror and Black Mirror II first; this one continues straight on from the second.
• Turn on the hotspot indicator in the options, then press H or the spacebar to see everything you can click in a scene.
• Turn on speech bubbles too. The music can drown out the voices, and a missed line can be the clue you need.
• Check the diary in your inventory when you are stuck: it lists what the chapter still needs.
• Revisit people after each discovery; the game often waits for one missed conversation.
• Save often in separate slots. The game saves itself before a death, but not before every wrong turn.

Questions