How many stories have you experienced in your lifetime? From picture books as a kid, to films, TV shows, novels, audiobooks, and videogames, do you have a rough number? Are we talking thousands? More? Well, let me tell you right now, amongst all those thousands upon thousands of stories you’ve experienced, you’ve never encountered a yarn quite like the tale that Dark Auction is telling.
Essentially a visual novel with some – very – slight gameplay elements, Dark Auction follows protagonist Noah Crawford on a seemingly simple task of retrieving his father from an auction. Rather ominously though, Noah discovers that this auction is taking place in a spooky European-like castle in the middle of a mist-soaked woodland. The items being auctioned? Well, they belonged to ‘Dictator X’, who, to all intents and purposes, is Hitler. Noah is soon trapped in the castle with a bunch of other veritable inmates.
Each of them is a genuinely engaging character, with a lot of depth to uncover and fascinating motivations behind their actions and behaviours. They all feel like fully rounded personalities that you’ll want to get to know. Which is a very good thing, as most of your time in the game will be spent conversing with your fellow auctioneers.
Anyway, soon Noah is strong-armed by men wearing Parrot masks – yep, not making this up – to do their bidding. Literally their bidding, as much of Dark Auction takes place within an auction house. These scenes play out akin to the trials in the Phoenix Wright series. It is up to Noah to spot the errors in a character’s memories – it’s via memories, rather than money, that people place their bids and unlock the artefact they desire – and then attempt to fill in the blanks.
Noah gathers the information he’ll need by slowing strolling around a handful of rooms, talking to NPC’s in an attempt to learn more about them, whilst adding ideas to his mental ‘word cloud’ – a handy mechanic that enables him to spot the inaccuracies during an auction testimony and provide the contradictory evidence. He does this not to attack the participants, but to support them, usually guiding them through a traumatic moment of their lives in the process.
If this all sounds like a bewildering hodgepodge of ideas, then that’s because, well, it is. Yet somehow all these disparate elements of the plot – Hitler, therapeutic auction sessions, parrot men, post-war Europe, trauma, heck, even time travel – meld together rather neatly. Offering a fresh, compelling and often rather tense narrative that will keep you clicking through reams of dialogue from beginning to end. Though with a story from the mind of Rika Suzuki – the writing talent behind Nintendo DS classics like the Another Code series and the superb noir-thriller Hotel Dusk: Room 215 – the fact that the narrative is uniquely brilliant is no real surprise.
Where Dark Auction struggles, then, is in its presentation. Visually, during the exploration phases, Dark Auction feels ancient. There are both 3D third-person and first-person elements, and these look and handle like one of the early Resident Evil remakes. Despite the simplicity, the frame rate on Nintendo Switch is lousy; character models are blocky and lack sufficient animation to give them any personality. The environments themselves are devoid of atmosphere and detail, often robbing the game of the tension that the scripted elements have worked so hard to build.
Outside of dialogue, far too much time is spent wandering into a room and being forced to look at every clue until the game allows you to leave again. It’s repetitive and feels like unnecessary padding, keeping you from getting to the good bit, such as the next surprising twist or informing reveal during an auction. The auctions themselves and the talking heads dialogue moments also benefit from losing the lousy 3D and going full 2D, all gorgeous character art and smooth flowing movements.
