Dark Nights with Poe & Munro review

Dark Nights with Poe & Munro tells the (mis)adventures of amateur radio hosts (and lovers) Poe and Munro in the fictional town of August in England. They take calls from their listeners who tell them scary and creepy tales. Each episode covers a different subject and at times they take the roles of amateur investigators. Will their curiosity get the better of them?

Dark Nights with Poe & Munro is an FMV game; a full-motion video game meaning that it’s basically an interactive movie where players will make the decision between different possibilities brought up before them. Based on your decision, the character will interact and banter back and forth. While most of the time you’ll simply guide Poe and Munro through their banter, some episodes also feature additional characters which can have an impact on our titular characters. One false move and BAM either of them could suffer a fatal fate.

These types of games are designed with replay value in mind. Each decision taken will guide players through a different path allowing them to see more interactions and different results. One of the most interesting points here is that one of the episodes is a throwback to The Infectious Madness of Doctor Dekker, another FMV developed by D’Avekki Studios.

While as a whole, the game and story somewhat make sense, each episode, they make mention of the fact that Poe is married and he’s having an affair with Munro; while it is a pivotal point in one of the later episodes (if your decisions made it to that section; no spoilers here) but given how Poe behaves and the few times he “talks” to his wife, it could’ve been cut from the game. It also makes Poe come off as kind of a prick. The game’s main nuisance is that oftentimes when having to choose between 2 or 3 options, it’s not always clear what will be the result of your decision; it could be what you hoped, the opposite, or hell even something you didn’t expect.

On the presentation side of things, this is where things take a scary turn. Given it’s a “movie”, you have to experience the characters’ performances and well… it’s a bit cringe-y to say the least. While Leah Cunard does a decent job with the Munro character, Klemens Koehring who plays Poe doesn’t feel believable and both deliver some lines in a cringe-y manner. The game also suffers from technical performances. Editing’s pretty choppy and often times the game would just freeze, yet I could still hear the voiceovers.

Fans of the FMV genre will rejoice with Dark Nights with Poe & Munro thanks to being able to enjoy 6 mini-stories instead of a longer experience. It feels like a buddy cop movie with the guys from Dumb and Dumber, but in a bit more unsettling settings. While it is kind of difficult at times to take the actors’ performances seriously and some very unclear options when it comes to choices to be made, Dark Nights with Poe & Munro remains an interesting experience thanks to its replay value. Although, I was expecting something akin to Are You Afraid of the Dark? rather than something that comes off too goofy.