 I have a thing for independently made 2D puzzle platformers. Next on the pile is The Fall, and at first glance this looks like a cheap rip-off clone baby of Limbo and the Swapper, but the game doesn't really play like either of those. The gameplay is closer to a game like Shadowrun. It's more a point-and-click story-driven game that requires a lot of trial and error and a lot of patience. You play as a sentient combat spacesuit that's housing an injured and unconscious guy who crashed his spaceship into an unknown planet. Nice going guy. He was on a mission to do...something. The suit's artificial intelligence doesn't know, all it knows is to get this guy back to safety somehow, and to do this you have to navigate your way by scanning for clues that tell you what you're supposed to do and how you're supposed to do it. The Fall is pure trial and error. You really do just fumble around until you figure it out. It might take you 2 minutes, it might take you 20 minutes, or you might just turn it off. Either you like these kind of games, or you don't. It's usually a big daisy chain of things you have to figure out, like pick up this pan and use it to collect something that would lure out this beast so it can unlock the next area that you can explore, or fix a broken wire with an item that you find somewhere to power up the elevator so you can interact with another artificial lifeform and answer some questions so you can obtain an ability to do something else to unlock another part of the map. And on and on it goes, you get the idea. But yeah, you gotta scan every part of the screen and analyze everything you can and use the old noodle to put the pieces together yourself. Many puzzles have you manipulating your surroundings piece by piece just to get by, and in fact you unlock your suit's capabilities piece by piece, puzzle by puzzle, not unlike how you obtain abilities in a game like Metroid. You do have unlimited ammo for your gun, so there's that, but you also link up digitally to access control panels and, well, all sorts of stuff. You just point your flashlight at it, light up the icon, and see what you can do. That's really the entire basis of the gameplay right there. The hook here is the story, which I'd imagine might be cliched to some, but I thought it was pretty interesting. What I really like is that the suit, or arid as its name, realizes it's kind of stuck because it can't access a lot of its functionality because, well, the guy that's supposed to access it is knocked out. So what you have to do is purposely put yourself in dangerous situations so the emergency settings automatically kick in. I thought that was a clever touch. Let it be known though that there is not very much combat in this game at all, and there is a lot of dialogue, and I mean a lot. But there's also a lot of unexpected humor here. So this game isn't a dry, ultra-serious experience by any means. Like one particular section where you're tested on your service skills by pleasing this family, by putting flowers on the table, and such. That's pretty unexpected. So yeah, at first glance, the fall looks kind of generic and cheap. The animations here make your character feel pretty flimsy. I won't lie, but I still enjoyed the fall. It kind of has a dead space or shadow complex vibe to it. The one flaw I'll point out is that this game is really short. It's essentially a setup for a sequel, or maybe even an entire series. And I do hope to see that, because I thought this game was pretty interesting. It's not the most original game, especially visually, and I can't say the style of gameplay is for everyone, but I thought it was worth a playthrough.