The Black Mirror

aka: Black Mirror 1, Black Mirror I, Black Mirror: Der dunkle Spiegel der Seele, Messenger of Death, Posel Smrti, The Black Mirror: Lo Specchio Riflette Le Colpe Oscure Del Passato, The Black Mirror: el pasado es el oscuro espejo de tu alma, The Black Mirror: the past is a diverted mirror of your soul
Moby ID: 9391

Description official descriptions

The death of his grandfather, William, brings Samuel Gordon back to Black Mirror, the family's ancestral home. Although William was considered a kook and his death most likely a suicide, Samuel is investigating the matter. Samuel is convinced that the death was no accident and that the mystery's answer lies in the research William conducted, sequestered in the castle's tower. But will uncovering ancient family secrets bring new light to the matter or shroud the Gordon family in doom?

The Black Mirror is a third-person, point-and-click adventure game set largely on the sprawling grounds of Black Mirror Manor including an asylum, the church and its grounds, and the town of Willow Creek. The game begins immediately after William's funeral and Samuel is reintroduced to his estranged family and meets the household staff. An uncle who hides himself away in his study, an ill-tempered gardener, and a family doctor who hints that he knows something are just some of the cast members Samuel will deal with. The Black Mirror contains 150 locations and five hours of spoken dialogue.

Spellings

  • Черное Зеркало - Russian spelling

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Screenshots

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Credits (Windows version)

89 People (88 developers, 1 thanks) · View all

President
VP Marketing
Executive Producer
Acquisitions Manager
Producer
Product Manager
Graphics Department Manager
Creative Director
Graphic Design
Director, International Communications
PR Coordinator
QA Manager
QA Lead
QA Staff
[ full credits ]

Reviews

Critics

Average score: 74% (based on 55 ratings)

Players

Average score: 3.7 out of 5 (based on 71 ratings with 5 reviews)

Waste of Time!

The Good
The backgrounds were well rendered and sound effects were OK.

The Bad
Where to start? Other than the ending (which requires special mention) this is a state of the art game......for 1995! The characters were stiff and almost like South Park cut outs. The dialogue could have been phoned in and probably was. But the ending was absolutely insane. What happened? Did they run out of space, or time? I kept saying there will be more on the second disk...but it was never used! This may be a "heavy" ending for our Wild and Swinging East European guys but for the rest of the world it was simply STUPID!

The Bottom Line
Don't waste your time. If you ever feel like buying this dog, lie down till the feeling goes away ( or just go jump off a tall building!).

Windows · by Rick McGarry (2) · 2004

Intense, engrossing, creepy ... GOOD!

The Good
Have you ever played a game that you liked so much that you couldn't stop playing ... depriving yourself of sleep just to play a few minutes more? The Black Mirror is that type of game - at least it was for me.

The story is deeply "immersive" and creative. You can tell when Samuel first arrives that his family has had a long and prosperous history. The Gordons have lived in the beautiful "manor", Black Mirror Castle, for centuries. Servants take care of the mundane tasks around the lavishly decorated manor and its grounds. The Gordon home hides many secrets in the main living quarters and in those parts that are unknown (there are "secret" areas, of course!). The discovery of an early family feud between twin brothers and the curse one put upon the other is only the beginning of the intrigue. This tale kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time.

The Black Mirror has all of the components that make an adventure great. Besides the wonderful story, it is easy to install and use, and the graphics are utterly beautiful. 3D effects were carried out wonderfully! Babbling brooks, horses bobbing their heads in the stable .. even moths fluttering around a lamp at night.

Try wearing your headphones while playing it! You'll be amazed at the sound effects and the mood-enhancing music. Double the experience by playing in a dark room! Everything from the lovely sounds of birds in spring to the pitter-patter of rain was authentic sounding. The lightning made me jump out of my skin! The actors and actresses did a marvelous job portraying the parts, their speech laden with natural inflections, tones and accents.

The puzzles are so well integrated into the plot that they feel like mere "problems" to be solved. But, not all of them are easy - quite a few are downright hard.

The Bad
There's a misprint on the box and in the manual. Try installing this on a Pentium 2 and you'll be sorely disappointed. The "Read Me" file corrects the specs - it needs a Pentium 3 400 minimum.

I don't blame companies for wanting to copy protect their software, but I didn't particularly like the brand of software they chose for this one.

Several puzzles had me digging into the dictionary and encyclopedia to find the answers since none were provided in the game.

I didn't particularly like the ending. I was really anticipating a huge confrontation with the forces of evil. What I got was ... well, a bit disappointing. Although I must admit that what happened naturally concluded the "family curse" dilemma.

The Bottom Line
I loved The Black Mirror! Other than the few things I listed above, I thought it was absolutely wonderful. I can see why they released it just before Halloween. This is a really good, haunting story with all the suspense of a detective mystery .. with a twist. It played flawlessly throughout ... not a glimmer of a problem anywhere. There's quite a lot of dialogue between characters, and just a bit of reading. Plenty of save slots too. Wonderfully designed and a game I won't easily forget. My rating 5/5!

Windows · by Jeanne (75956) · 2009

You can't go home again

The Good
The death of his grandfather, William, brings Samuel Gordon back to Black Mirror, the family's ancestral home. Although William was considered a kook and his death most likely a suicide, Samuel is investigating the matter. Samuel is convinced that the death was no accident and that the mystery's answer lies in the research William conducted, sequestered in the castle's tower. But will uncovering ancient family secrets bring new light to the matter or shroud the Gordon family in doom?

Black Mirror is a third-person, point-and-click adventure game set largely on the sprawling grounds of Black Mirror Manor including an asylum, the church and its grounds, and the town of Willow Creek. The game begins immediately after William's funeral and Samuel is reintroduced to his estranged family and meets the household staff. An uncle who secrets himself away in his study, an ill-tempered gardener, and a family doctor who hints that he knows something are just some of the cast members Samuel will deal with. In all, Samuel will explore an ad blurbian 150 locations and listen to five hours of spoken dialogue.

Like most adventure games, Samuel spends a good deal of time collecting inventory objects and dealing with environmental obstacles. Left-clicking on hotspots makes Samuel do something: open a door, use a key, start a conversation. Black Mirror also lets Samuel right-click hotspots, at times, for a more thorough investigation or to make a general comment about a person. While it does have its share of puzzles, Black Mirror is not a puzzle-heavy game and Samuel will make it through large chunks of the game simply by using the correct object at the correct time or by talking to people.

Conversation plays a huge role in Black Mirror and the designers did a good job of weaving household intrigue into the storyline. For instance, a casual mention that someone imbibes too much leads to the discovery of a household feud and a reflection on the state of the Gordon family. While much conversation relies on clicking icons, occasionally Samuel has the opportunity to be gentle or abrasive. This doesn't affect the game's outcome, but it does reflect on Samuel's character.

Black Mirror is atmospheric and has wonderful ambient sound effects that draw the player into a largely static scene. Although the story is clearly a horror/mystery, whether its origin is natural or supernatural is wisely left open until the game's ending levels. And as the death toll rises (and finally reaches the game's M-rating), events become more unsettling with Samuel's life increasingly placed at risk.

The Bad
Like many games, Black Mirror has an alphanumeric code the player types in the first time the game runs. Black Mirror also uses the insidious StarForce Copy Protection System which analyzes the disk to make sure it's an original. It does this every time the game starts and takes between thirty seconds to two minutes. Thank you, Adventure Company!

Anyway, Black Mirror has a lot going for it in terms of story and design, but suffers from poor pacing and weak game play. To begin with, things take longer in Black Mirror than they should. Early on, Samuel realizes that he should document the arcane symbols he finds around the manor. The easiest way to do this is to use his old camera, but he needs film. Luckily Robert has film in his trunk in the tower. So Samuel goes to the tower and finds that the trunk is locked. Trek back to Robert and Robert says, Oops, here's the key. Just wait until you have to get the film developed.

Backtracking seems to be Black Mirror's theme though. Samuel tends not to notice inventory until he needs something. Expect to revisit areas and pixel hunt from time to time, just to see if something new pops up. Occasionally characters will ask you to wait a bit before they can help you. This doesn't mean just waiting though, it means leaving the area and reentering it to see if "time" has "passed."

More annoying is Black Mirror's expectation that players draw from an external pool of knowledge rather than using hints within the game. While I wasn't stumped by basic chess moves or identifying planets by their shape, I did have trouble with a slider puzzle that relied on knowledge of the order and symbols of the zodiac. Utterly amazing, especially for a game that isn't afraid to be wordy.

Finally, at times I was completely jarred by what Samuel was expected to do. How do you get a kid to talk to a stranger? Give him candy! Wow. Samuel is, at turns, a prissy snob who doesn't want to get his hands dirty as he talks down to the staff and a conniving liar who sets up an elaborate electrocution trap. I have no problem playing a right bastard as long as the game establishes that he's a right bastard. Samuel seems more misguided, so this adds unnecessary confusion—like when a character asks you to go into town for something and tells you specifically where to find it, it's easy to think that's really what you are supposed to do.

The Bottom Line
I imagine Black Mirror had a lot of back-story that never made it to the game. As such, the story is interesting, but elements like the main character's tortured soul come off as self-important. Some elements that did make it to the final game should have been better developed. Samuel takes pills for his headaches. Couldn't that be incorporated into game play? It seems like Samuel has a hallucination at one point, spotting blood in a grinder. Wouldn't it be interesting having a character that sees things, unless he takes his medication—and then limit the number of pills he has? Why not let Samuel's personality options, apparent in some conversations, have a real affect?

Instead Black Mirror is a typical adventure game, which isn't to say that it's a bad game, but don't expect to be whisked away.

Windows · by Terrence Bosky (5397) · 2005

[ View all 5 player reviews ]

Discussion

Subject By Date
Special Edition Zerobrain (3052) Dec 2, 2010

Trivia

German localization

The voice of the main character Samuel Gordon is the German voice of Johnny Depp. This is interesting because Gordon looks similar to Depp.

Polish localization

For its release in Poland, the game's subtitles were translated to Polish. However, nearly each sentence contains mistakes such as typos, repetitions (sometimes the same sentence is repeated twice in a row), omissions and even spelling errors.

Awards

  • 4Players
    • 2004 – Best Adventure Game of the Year

Information also contributed by BostonGoerge

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by dusoft.

Additional contributors: MAT, Terrence Bosky, Jeanne, Monkeyhead, Havoc Crow, formercontrib, Zeppin, Klaster_1, Patrick Bregger, Zerobrain, Plok.

Game added June 11, 2003. Last modified March 20, 2024.