Something's gone wrong in the town of Silver Falls. It started with cattle being mutilated, and the wildlife acting strangely. Then people started going missing. And now time itself seems to have stopped, with the entire town frozen in a single moment... Or at least, almost everyone. For some reason, Holt, Analise, and Moss are unaffected. They'll have to work together to unravel the mysteries and save their town.
Originally released on January 2, 2020 on the New Nintendo 3DS, 3 Down Stars is the first entry in the Silver Falls series. In terms of the story's timeline, however, it's currently the second to last. It's a traditional Survival Horror in the vein of Alan Wake and Silent Hill. It also has a bonus mini-game called Frontier Fighters, which lets you tackle a variety of missions with different enemies and equipment builds.
The game has examples of the following tropes:
- Action Survivor: Holt and Analise are just regular town folk, yet they're capable of killing mutant wolves and bears when cornered.
- Alien Abduction: The game has all the hallmarks of them. People go missing, the lucky ones come back with no memory of what happened, cattle is found mutilated and drained of blood, etc. They've become much more frequent lately, with townsfolk seeing lights in the sky. Moss is the most prominent victim at first, as it's revealed that he remembers being abducted subconsciously. If you pay attention to the details, however, you'll find out such mysterious events go back decades, which are the plots of the other games.
- Aliens in Cardiff: Silver Falls is a small mountain town, yet is home to aliens, ghosts, and mutated animals.
- Ammunition Conservation: Played straight at first; there's a limited amount of weapons and ammo, and enemies can take tons of damage. But once you figure out how the time mechanics work, it's completely inverted; since almost everything carries over every time you die, you can amass so much gear that you'll often run out of inventory slots.
- Applied Phlebotinum: The 3 orbs somehow control the flow of time within a certain distance.
- Arcadia: Silver Falls is this at first glance. This little town is a world-class tourist destination with incredible landscapes, excellent hiking and fishing opportunities, famous cuisine, and is home to several successful people, particularly writers, artists, musicians, and actors. But once you get past this polished, rugged veneer, it quickly veers into Lovecraft Country.
- Bald of Authority: Moss is the sheriff of Silver Falls, and is reasonably good at what he does. When he and Analise come across the corpse of the girl who got run over, he tells her that he'll handle it because that's part of his job.
- By-the-Book Cop: At the beginning of the game, Moss refuses to give Sam his rifle back because the latter doesn't have his permit on hand. Moss tells him to come by the office in the morning to pick it up. This ends up getting Sam killed because he couldn't defend himself from a wolf attack. When Moss figures out how the time reset works, that's the first thing he changes.
- Canine Companion: Soldier shows up on various points of the map, and lets your use his combat vest as a way to unload extra inventory and disperse resources amongst the three characters. A few notes you can find mention that Soldier's owner is unknown, and that he can seemingly vanish and show up in another location.
- Close-Range Combatant: You can fight using melee weapons like knives, axes, hammers, sticks, urban throwing stars, and even a golf club. Given how manually aiming can be a little clunky, sticking to melee weapons can be better tactically.
- Cool Old Guy: Arnalt is happy to see Holt, as they planned on going fishing on the 2nd anniversary of Hogan's death. But he doesn't remember inviting Holt at all, and he says he had lunch with Hogan just last week. Instead of planning a fishing trip, he's secretly researching alien abductions, and directs Holt where to go next.
- The Corruption: Wild animals have been infected by something, causing their skin to mutate into red, fleshy pulp with large, mushroom-like tumors growing out of it.
- Creepy Good: The Mechanic is a strange being decked out in a blood red overcoat and hood, with his face covered by a gas mask. But he claims he there to help, and is the one who built the Cryo Shot. He'll also appear every time you continue your game, standing near the door portal and reminding you of what your current objective is.
- First-Name Basis: Officially, one of our heroes is Sheriff Brook. But he tells everyone just to call him Moss.
- Flying Saucer: Or in this case, giant flying orbs. Three of them have seemingly crashed at different point in the town. Your task is to find and attach smaller orbs to them, which will cause them to fly away and restore the flow of time. Their origin and purpose are entirely unknown.
- Freeze Ray: Moss eventually acquires the Cryo Shot, which shoots a small ball of ice.
- Game-Breaking Bug:
- In the initial version, there was a glitch that prevented you from going through a certain door to beat the game. This was later patched. However, Nintendo of Europe's eShop never added the patch, which left the game unbeatable for EU players.
- Once you leave Arnalt's house, it's possible to walk to the cliffs behind it and fall off. You'll land in what should have been the river, but the water will have vanished. If you keep moving, you'll eventually fall through the map itself.
- When you go to the motel, be wary of the pool in the back. The ground between the rim of the pool and the fence is slightly lower than both of them. If you stand on that particular section, your character's model will get trapped, and you'll be softlocked.
- There's no option to discard certain items, and you have a limited amount of slots. As a result, it's possible to get into certain situations where you need to grab a specific item to advance the plot, but can't because you can't switch out full item slots. Or when you just want to grab a healing item, but can't. Your only option is to go all the way to Soldier and unload some inventory. This is particularly egregious in the lumberyard, when Soldier's closest position is all the way back up at the top of the hill. It's a long walk back up, and enemies can attack you both coming and going.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: Instead of dying, the characters revert back to where they were before certain events. However, they retain their memories of what they did or didn't do, so they can change their strategies. This is demonstrated at the start of the story, when Holt gets attacked and killed by a wolf. He snaps back to the minute before it happened, and he knows to grab the axe that was laying on the ground nearby. When all three of them finally meet up, they pool their knowledge and figure out how to get past certain obstacles. This can be done via regular gameplay as well; since most items carry over after the reset, it's possible to stack multiple health items.
- Hell Is That Noise: The Geiger counter will start going off whenever there's an enemy close by, which means you'll hear them a few second before you see them.
- Improbable Weapon User: Aside from more conventional weapons, you can kill with a golf club.
- Justified Save Point: The save points are in the form of a handful of old school payphones.
- Old Save Bonus: The game uses a unique Code Linker system that lets you create and trade key codes with other Silver Falls games, letting you unlock different things. In the case of 3 Down Stars, Code Linker will unlock the main characters from the other games as playable in Frontier Fighters Mode.
- Production Foreshadowing: This is an interesting case, as 3 Down Stars is the first game released in the series, but is currently the penultimate one in the in-game timeline. As a result, there are references to past events, which are actually games that were released later on.
- Helen was researching a mysterious forest fire that happened in Westall Meadow back in the '90s. Witnesses reported that the cause was a plane crash. However, there were no deaths or even injuries, despite it happening without warning. Everyone somehow evacuated well in advance, yet seemed to have some sort of amnesia. This was blamed on fumes from the crash. But if you play Galaxy Bound Curse, you'll know the truth.
- Bull Brandish is interested in learning more about his grandpa, and the land he inherited from him. Especially in regards to the decades of "animal attacks" and disappearances. If you play Undertakers, the reason immediately becomes clear.
- In Frontier Fighters, Analise will make a passing comment about wanting to explore a mansion that's rumored to be haunted. If you know the plot of Vicarious Brothers, you know it's not just a rumor.
- Set Right What Once Went Wrong: Our heroes can die and revive with all memories of their previous runs, which lets them learn what to prioritize and how to get past certain objectives. It also lets them help the other townsfolk directly, the first of which involves saving Sam from getting eaten by wolves.
- Shout-Out:
- One of the investigator's notes has them pondering over what's going on, idly theorizing that the town is a manifestation of someone's consciousness.
- If you give The Mechanic a trading card, he may say, "This will make a fine addition to my collection."
- The Spook: The Mechanic shows up at odd moments, always dressed in a blood red overcoat and gas mask. He seems polite enough, but it's clear that there's something... off about him. He'll give some cryptic answers, and then vanish just as quickly as he appears.
- Retired Badass: Slim used to be a fighter pilot. But he's been in a downward spiral of alcoholism for years, leaving him almost incapable of taking care of himself. He's also known as the town's conspiracy nut due to his knowledge of aliens and cryptids.
- Time Stands Still: Almost everyone in Silver Falls is frozen in place, seemingly due to the 3 orbs that crashed in town. You're introduced to the majority of the cast this way. Some of them are pretty funny, like finding a guy mid-piss in one of the hotel rooms, or Slim drunkenly stretching on his front porch while wearing nothing but a pink bathrobe. However, some of them offer darker, more mysterious insights into what's going on in town behind the scenes, like Bull Brandish somehow getting into confidential files at the sheriff's office, or Helen repairing some kind device while looking over news articles about a mysterious fire in the '90s.
- Timey-Wimey Ball: Holt, Analise, and Moss seem to be doing some form of Time Travel, given that the entire town in frozen in a single moment. They can also intentionally get themselves killed and revert back to an earlier point in time, yet still retain the knowledge and items they acquired. In terms of the story, however, this becomes much more complicated when it's revealed all three characters have memories of events that didn't happen. For example, the entire reason Holt comes back to Silver Falls is to go fishing on the 2nd anniversary of his grandpa Hogan's death. But according to his uncle Arnalt, Hogan is alive and well, and had lunch with him last week. Analise has gotten close with her dad, whose health has been gradually declining. She's even been taking over his responsibilities as the town's event planner. But according to Moss, he's been dead for months. As for Moss, he's been going about his daily responsibilities as the sheriff, yet he can't remember living at the motel after temporarily separating from his wife and family. This raises all kinds of Alternate Timeline-related questions.
- Trauma-Induced Amnesia: Looking at the documents and hearing the recording at the hospital reveals that Moss subconsciously remembers being abducted by aliens, and that his night terrors are his memories. And he's far from the only one.
- Un-Paused: This is how Analise becomes playable early on, once Holt gets the first orb to leave. It takes a darker turn when Analise takes care of the second one, inadvertantly causing a girl to get run over by a car.
- Wake-Up Call Boss: Early in the game, it's possible to simply run away from most of the fights. But you'll reach a point where Analise has to single-handedly take down a mutant bear, and the game will not let you run away. It's at this point where you have to master the combat mechanics well enough to survive encounters with much stronger enemies.
- Wrestler in All of Us: Moss's button prompt attack is a hefty dropkick.
