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Dark, fatalistic, and beautifully designed experience, October 21, 2020Dull Grey is an intriguing piece featuring a main character who seems unable to control his own destiny. It’s also a beautifully designed experience in terms of presentation, with a gray-scale palette illustrating a bleak landscape in what appears to be a post-apocalyptic world.
In terms of interactivity, it uses an interesting mechanic wherein the same binary choice is presented at each decision point. The repetitiveness fits well with the theme and setting, and the progression also builds in a powerful way as we follow a map and travel from scene to scene toward a momentous decision in the protagonist’s life, in a way that feels inevitably hopeless.
Different paths through the story presumably depend on the characters present at each decision point being more amenable to one option or another (lamplighter vs. tallyman). While I like this idea in theory, in the couple of replays I tried it felt like the sequence of scenes remained very linear regardless of choice, and I didn’t feel a connection to the decisions or any real sense of where they were leading me.
However, this is ultimately a piece that resonates in terms of mood, setting, writing, and art design, and it stands out as a unique and memorable take on IF.