As Dusk Falls is a fantastic game if you enjoy games such as Life is Strange and interactive movie games such as The Complex. It has a lot of choices you can make and actually seems to have some good branching to the story you can do. The game also does a good job of pacing and positioning. It bounces between characters and points in time a lot yet does so in a way that didn’t confuse me and actually ties things together nicely. There are also a decent amount of non dialogue game play such as QTE events, and searching the environment in a point and click manner. The music is very well done. One part that is weird and bound to ruffle feathers is the motion. The game isn’t still images or FMV. It is a weird hybrid that is kind of like watching an interactive comic book without the voice bubbles. It’s a decent style and certainly different but at the same time I can see how many people might think that the game is lagging or that there is some kind of glitch as the lips don't move with the audio. I thought so until I watched some Youtube videos and saw it was happening to others as well and was just normal. The game has good object detail such as on cars and buildings but seems to go for more of a comic book style look for people and it's a bit jarring at times. I can't tell if it's a lack of detail on people and clothing or if it just how it's supposed to look. I certainly hope the game gets a sequel as it leaves on a bit of a cliffhanger. There's enough closure to leave me pretty content but at the same time there's a few characters who I feel needed more of an epilogue or needed more time in the last book. For instance I wanted to know more about how Joyce's son Ash faired in the future parts as well as just what happened with Sheriff Romero. I could have even done with more explanation on what kind of journey that Paul and Sharon had. That being said I really enjoyed watching Zoe and Jay unfold and liked the options given there. The game has a great story map which has a very detailed layout of what route your story has taken while not spoiling what elements the the other routes would have introduced. There are also "insights" which are supposed to give you an insight into your play style but to be honest they were a little vague at times.
I played As Dusk Falls on Linux using Wine and DXVK. The game is locked to 30 FPS. There are guides and tools to try to change this but I couldn't get them to work. They're made to work on Windows not Linux so whether that was the cause I don't know. In any case there is no excuse to lock games to 30 FPS on PC so people shouldn't have to resort to tools. The game has an auto save system. You can have multiple profiles each with their own save. I prefer manual save systems myself as it gives the user more freedom but at the same time this game does give you the ability to reload from certain points in the story map so it's not as bad as some games where you only get one save total. One plus I will say is at least the save points aren't spaced too far apart. There are six settings and a resolution option. You can reduce motion blur and depth of field but you can't turn them off which I find annoying as I dislike both. The game at least ran at a constant 30 FPS with no drops. I will say that it used far more VRAM than the visuals should have given their look. Luckily I had lots to spare so it wasn't an issue. I tried both keyboard and mouse and my Logitech F310 game pad and opted for the game pad. It worked with my F310 with zero issues and all button prompts showed up properly on screen. I had also played for a bit on an RX 590 which ran just as well as my 7800 XT so even older GPUs can do well here.
Game Engine: Unity
Graphics API: DXVK
Game Version Played: 1.01 (GOG)
Disk Space Used: 71GB
Input Used: Logitech F310
Game Settings Used: 2560x1440, small depth of field, high res textures enabled, shadow cascades on high, screen space reflection overkill
GPU Usage: 8-47 %
VRAM Usage: 3253-7252 MB
CPU Usage: 6-18 %
System RAM Usage: 3.4-5.6 GB
Frame Rate: Constant 30 FPS
My technical nitpicks aside I highly enjoyed my time with As Dusk Falls. While the story was left with a little too much unfinished at parts it was a great ride and even if there is never a sequel I am content. Few games I can think of can match the branching that they did. I finished my first play through in six hours and twenty one minutes. I paid $9.59 CAD for the game but would say it is easily worth it's current price tag of $33.89 CAD.
My System:
Intel i5-12600K | 32GB DDR4-3200 CL16 | Gigabyte RX 7800 XT 16GB | Western Digital Black SN850X 2TB | Artix | Mate 1.28.2 | Kernel 6.10.2-artix1-1 | Mesa 24.1.5-arch1.1 | MSI G2730QPF 2560*1440 @ 165hz | Wine 9.14