Back in 2008, Darkling Room released what is one of the absolute best adventure and/or horror games ever made – The Lost Crown. It was a follow up of sorts to 2003’s Dark Fall: The Journal, which is almost universally in every “Top Ten Horror Game” list by anyone who has actually played more than the Resident Evil and Silent Hill franchises. Somehow, The Lost Crown surpassed it in every way and it went on to win multiple awards from us in 2008. Since then, fans of Darkling Room and Jonathon Boakes have been waiting, waiting and well…waiting for the next game in the series, The Last Crown.
Well, as you can imagine, we’re still waiting for The Last Crown to be released. Its latest release date of October 2013 has been pushed back yet again. Yes, it’s disappointing, but I’d rather wait for a high quality affair than to have the game rushed and not live up to expectations. The good news is that Mr. Boakes has something to help ease the extended wait –a short teaser game entitled The Halloween Haunting. The Halloween Haunting will be a short game compared to previous Darkling room releases, but it should still be longer than say, an episodic adventure game like those put out by TellTale Games. Mr. Boakes has promised in his blog that The Halloween Haunting will be “a sizable game.” It will once again feature Nigel Danvers and Lucy Rubens and it will showcase the two paranormal investigators as they explore a building known as The Keeper’s Cottage on Blackenrock Isle. Do ghosts actually dwell within Keeper’s Cottage or is the building only haunted by a tragic event from the Victorian Age which locals have kept alive through rumour, gossip, and superstitious lore?
The Halloween Haunting is scheduled to come out, you guessed it, close to Halloween 2013. Best of all? It’s only going to cost five dollars to download! That’s an amazing deal. All proceeds from the download will go to help finish The Last Crown and go towards funding the final game in the series, The First Crown, which makes purchasing The Halloween Haunting an even bigger “must have” for horror gamers. I’m actually surprised Darkling Room hasn’t turned towards Kickstarter for these games, as they’d probably make a killing. You’ll be able to download The Halloween Haunting from the Darkling Room and Shadow Tor Studios store. Even better, while you are there, you can download the first three Dark Fall games, Barrow Hill and of course, The Lost Crown, most of which are only five dollars these days! How can you not own these. Trust me, while you are waiting for both The Halloween Haunting and The Last Crown to be released, get Dark Fall: The Journal, Barrow Hill and The Lost Crown. All three have won awards from us at some point and are beloved by both the horror and adventure gaming communities at large.
To learn more about The Halloween Haunting, you can go to Jonathan Boakes‘ blog post on the game, the Darkling Room website, or just visit www.thelastcrown.com. You can also click on the graphic to the right of this piece to expand it and read more about The Halloween Haunting in Jonathan Boakes’ own words. In the meantime if you want a nice little overview of Mr. Boakes’ games, you can always visit a summation of all the games in the series save Dark Fall 3 (The piece was written in late 2008 and DF3 came out in 2010) that we wrote right here. We’ll definitely be back with a review of The Halloween Haunting when it is released and I personally have been waiting for the next crown game for five years now. I can’t wait to see if it lives up to the previous games in the Dark Fall family.
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