Black Sails
Deck 13
Interactive
So what happens when your ship
sinks in the middle of nowhere? If you are Ana and Lex, just climb up a
rope and hop on board a passing other one. But then find yourself stuck
in a cabin, and sorting out what you think of each other.
Apparently what you think of
each other can spill over into how helpful Lex might be. I was rather
nice, and he actually wasn’t much use, but then I don’t know how less
helpful he would have been if I had been cranky. You don’t play Lex, but
you do have conversations with him which, in my game, provided some
direction about bigger objectives. It was up to you and Ana to achieve
and solve them all though.
You do get to play Fiona, a
vision or perhaps something else, who is a 7 year old girl also on the
same ship. Most of the time though is spent as Ana, a feisty journalist
who is determined to find out what and where they are and what is going
on.
Black Sails proclaims to be
creepy and mysterious, and that is probably apt. Horror it isn’t
(although bits of Fiona’s story are a tad horrific), and it didn’t
scare, and the mystery certainly outweighed the creepy, but there were
some creepy-ish bits. The sound palette does a good job of adding to the
atmosphere of a dark and not altogether inviting ship, and if you play
as suggested with the lights off and the sound up, there might be a jump
moment here and there.
What there won’t be is a
terribly user friendly perspective. The camera has a mind of its own,
and by the end I was thoroughly annoyed. Small spaces can be a giant
pain to get around, directions can change because of a turned around
camera, and you can find yourself hopping about all over the place
simply to be able to get to the other side of the room. For me, it was a
major irritant. You may not feel the same, but don’t say I didn’t warn
you.
Apart from getting around, the
puzzling is largely inventory based. As ever, some conundrums are less
obvious than others, but by and large I thought there was reasonable
feedback from the game about what might be needed, even if what that was
might be a tad fanciful. There were one or two solves that were beyond
me, and one or two that were silly. I am also still not sure what to
think of the disappearing sextant, but I did like the “where has the
ship been” puzzle which it was part of, and which was more an out and
out puzzle than an inventory conundrum.
Hotspots are plentiful, and can
be very tiny, so the reveal hotspot icon came in handy. The little gear,
or the hand icon, was equally welcomely revealed at times. Notes and
pages are found throughout the game, which add some depth to the strange
goings on, but are awfully hard to read.
It is inspired by (not based on)
a true story, which won’t be apparent till the end, and which offers
some alternative ends depending on some choices. I have played one so
far, which was probably the nice one, but I won’t really know till I try
and trigger the others.
The inventory is in a ribbon at
the top left of screen, and dragging items onto the magnifying glass
will let you look more closely or result in things being taken apart.
It isn’t terribly long, but some
of the puzzling did keep me scratching my head. I reckon I spent about 6
hours, which would have been longer without a peek or two at a
walkthrough.
It is third person point and
click all the way, you can save at will, and continue where you left
off. If ghosty ship based tales shiver your timbers, you will likely
find this a solid, if unspectacular, voyage.
Grade: B
I played on:
OS: Windows 7
Processor: Intel i7-3820 4GHz
RAM: 12GB Ripjaw DDR3 2133 Mhz
Video card: AMD Radeon
HD 7800 2048MB
GameBoomers Review Guidelines
October 2015
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