Iris.Fall, a game where shadows shouldn’t jumpscare you when they move on their own.

Who is this game for?

Explanation to Negative Feedback

Area-specific interactions

It’s not easy to suddenly stop on a dime and then interact with one of the books that brings out your shadow-self. It’s really easy to pass up the icon, and then backtrack only to pass it up again. It’s like, there’s a very small area where the icons pop up and if you step out of those areas, you’ll have to go back to wherever it was.

I was constantly clicking the left or right arrows in little increments to get the interaction symbol to pop up.

Fairly short

I was disappointed to realize how short this game was. In fact, I knew it was going to be rather short on playing, because you fly through some of those chapters and it’s like…there’s no way they’ve got a ton of levels to go through, you breeze by so fast.

Movement is janky

I had a lot of trouble moving around corners and such while playing this game. Like heading up staircases while they’re winding. Everything’s fine and dandy when you have to walk a straight line, but…turning into places is a little frustrating.

Explanation to Positive Feedback

Great visuals

It’s all in a greyscale style with some colors thrown in, and definitely reminds me of Alice in Wonderland as you go through area to area. But the graphics themselves lend a sort of depressed broken-down style to the environment and…I kind of think of Bear With Me, in a way, now that I’m looking at the graphics a bit more.

Unique puzzles

I like the different variety of puzzles this game has to offer. Some of them are fairly simple to figure out, but some can be a bit challenging. In fact, one such light puzzle had me twisting and turning that damn cube for like twenty minutes. I think ten minutes into the puzzle I just gave up and was turning everything randomly until everything clicked into place.

What made it more frustrating is the fact that I don’t recall a skip button.

So you literally have to figure these puzzles out if you want to progress.

Links Worth Checking Out

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Gameplay

Achievements

22 Steam achievements

Plot

After awakening from a dream, Iris follows a black cat into a dilapidated theater, traveling back and forth through a strange labyrinth of light and shadow. As the story unfolds, Iris begins to realise that everything in this theater seems to have some kind of hidden connection to herself.

Game Length

3 hours

Replay Value

No

Genre(s)

Iris.Fall Review

As soon as I saw the mechanics of this game, I immediately thought of Shady Part of Me, but it’s definitely not as smooth in the movement department.

And despite some of the larger areas you’re in, there’s really not a lot to interact with. At all. You can brush up against certain things that might move from your touch, but aside from that, there’s usually anywhere from 1-3 things that you can actually interact with in order to progress the game.

The puzzles were pretty nice to go through–only one of them was truly stressful and aggravating.

I know there was another puzzle area that I couldn’t quite figure out and I just had to complete it through process of elimination. I’m sure there was a trick to it that showed me what to do, but I’m an impatient person.

I have to say that artwork was the main thing I fell in love with and I enjoyed looking at the pieces.

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