So far the first game is, I will admit, kind of boring, but it is picking up. I have nothing against this type of game, but maybe I am used to the web-based "get out of this ONE room to escape".

Anyway, the super-low 640*480 is really playing with my monitors. I am not sure if this can be played in a window, or somehow up-scaled (Super2xSAI anyone?), or what.

Are the other games by Boakes et al, the same? Having a 16:9/10 monitor is not conducive to this game.

Though I will look into the graphics card settings to see if there is a scaling setting......

To answer the question posed in the thread title, I believe Dark Fall (like another adventure game in this style (mechanic wise, not thematically), RHEM) was made with Macromedia Director and I checked into ways of bypassing the issues I would have playing both of these games - in particular RHEM - on my laptop which does not support low resolutions and cuts off parts of the screen and I don't remember finding anything. I seem to recall one of the limitations of using Director with pre-rendered graphics is being stuck with one resolution with no built-in scaling options? Could be totally wrong there. And at the time, I could find no third-party tool that scaled these games or got them to run in a window. I would love to be wrong about all of this. Well, not all of this. Most of this.

As for the "escape from one room" games - I personally (opinion) consider this a completely different type of game that falls much closer to Myst than Escape games. It just adds horror into the mix.

No, I'm afraid it's strictly fixed resolution I'm afraid. That's perfectly normal for oldish adventure games though. Usually when you run into monitors that don't properly support 640x480, it's because they're HDTVs being used as monitors (sometimes they're sold as monitors but some of the internal electronics are intended for HDTVs).

Well I ask because this game was originally made in 2003 or so, right?

And it messed with my main laptop LCD, with a resolution of 1440*900, something fierce when playing the game. I try to put it on my second monitor, which is actual 4:3 with 1280*1024. But still, it hurts the eyes after a while, and then switching back to Windows.

Thanks for the responses, though! :)

Just as there are still people on Windows XP with 1024x768 now, back in 2003 there were still people running Win98 at 640x480.
If you're going for a fixed resolution, you have to go for the lowest common one still in use.

Do you have your laptop set to scale but maintain aspect ratio? It runs fine on my 1366x768 laptop like that.

Also 1280x1024 isn't 4:3, it's 5:4. ;)
Any 4:3 game at full screen on that monitor is actually stretched vertically a bit. I know because it's what I'm stuck with on my PC until I get a new monitor.

Okay, 5:4, but it is still much closer to 4:3 than 16:9/10 is......

I dunno, CCC won't run anymore on my laptop :( I don't believe there was a scaling option when it did run correctly.....

Oh, mine's Intel so I don't think I can be of much help there...