Overview
For those gamers that prefer to finish the game without referring to a walkthrough some hints and tips to prevent getting stuck.
Intro
I’ve been playing point and click adventure games since the late eighties and even though many of these game are very similar in how you pick up stuff, manipulate items in the inventory and make progress in the game some games manage to do things slightly different. Black Mirror is one of those games. I realized that I had gotten stuck or frustrated several times and often the solution was very simple but not very intuitive. So I decided to write a short guide to help other gamers get through most of this game without having to refer to a walkthrough and keep frustration to a minimum.
Save often!
Black Mirror is an adventure game were death is always close. Many people will die throughout the game and the game will sometimes allow you to die as well if you’re not carefull. That’s why it is very important that you save the game often. But don’t use just one save slot because you could get seriously screwed otherwise. I suggest creating a save at the start of each chapter and several other saves throughout each chapter, especially after solving one or several puzzles. This will save you a lot of frustration and prevent you from having to play through a large portion of the game again.
Clicking items and hot spots
A lot of adventure games use a consistent logic for left and right clicking. Left is always “move to”, “use”, “pick up”, “talk to” and right click is always “look at”. In the Black Mirror most interaction is done by left clicking. But sometimes right clicking will suddenly allow you to do something else like really search or otherwise manipulate an item or hot spot instead of left clicking as you would expect. In some puzzles left click will allow you to manipulate an item one way and right click will manipulate it in another way. This isn’t always obvious so if you’re stuck, remember to experiment with right clicking things. You’ll be surprised how often this might solve your problem.
Making progress
In a lot of adventure games you make progress by finding the correct object or solving a puzzle so you can open a door or a gate. In this game progress is often made by talking to the right person at the right time. So once you’ve found a new item you might only be able to make further progress after talking to one or more characters about this object.
Many locations won’t be available until you’ve spoken to the right character, found the right object or solved a certain puzzle. This is especially true in the first chapter of the game. Sometimes you won’t be allowed to leave a location until you’ve done everything there is to do.
Unlike other adventure games where you can pick up any item that isn’t screwed to the floor or glued to the table, in this game you’ll often won’t be able to pick up an object, use an object or even enter a location if you haven’t looked at it properly (using the right mouse click), talked to the right person, first manipulated another object or simply realised that you need to do perform a certain action. In other words you’ll often won’t be able to start solving a puzzle – even if it’s obvious you’ll have to do it in some point in the near future – untill you’re game character realises this too.
If a character tells you that he’ll do something for you but that it will take some time to do so just leave the screen and re-enter it and talk to characters again until the task is done. This happens quite often and since there often isn’t a lot to do otherwise this is the quickest way to ‘solve’ these puzzles. It doesn’t matter how long you stay away or how many screens you travel through. The game simple counts the number of times you’ve left the screen and talked to a specific character.
Closing comments
I really enjoyed the game despite the wooden character animations and the sometimes odd voice overs. The detailed backgrounds, well built history and overall good writing are proof that a lot of time and effort was put into this game. It would be a shame if other gamers were to quit this game just because they’ve hit an easily avoidable dead end.