Developer: RainDance LX
Publisher: Lace Games, KISS ltd
Platforms: PC, Mac
Tested on: PC
Between Me and The Night – Review
Between Me and The Night is a stunning surrealistic action adventure game that features the basic mechanics of a classic point and click puzzle game. This stunning game is developed by RainDance LX and features a narrative without truly having a storyline that is on the verge of sanity and utter madness.
Story
Between Me and The Night does not offer a spoken narration nor does it offer any type of narrative that the player can follow. The game features several objects that can be interacted with and most of these objects have descriptions that can reveal a small part of the protagonist’s past but the game remains very vague on plenty of subjects. A given fact from the very beginning is that the protagonist is a gamer and seems to be somewhat of an introvert seeing as he shows very anti-social behavior, causing him to misread emotions.
In total there are three chapters to complete. The first chapter reveals the protagonist’s childhood home and the broken bonds he has with his family. The second chapter reveals his struggles as a teenager in high school while the third chapter takes place in his own apartment where we see the protagonist struggle with every-day life.
Although the game shows us three important stages in the nameless protagonist’s life, namely childhood, adolescence and adulthood, there is no narrative to back up the story thus we can conclude that the game’s storyline is very open to the imagination of the player and their own interpretations of events.
Graphics
Since the game offers three chapters in three different stages of the protagonist’ life, each chapter takes place in a different setting. This allows for a good variation of backgrounds, given the fact that each room is different from the previous one in every sense. The game also has a day and night cycle and each location has visual transitions of the cycle. An orange glow shows the player that the sun is rising while a soft blue hue reveals a grey and rainy day.
The art style in this game is absolutely stunning and showcases a surrealistic visual design that comes close to Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland. This is mostly visible in the creatures that roam the dark in your imagination but the eerie atmosphere reveals itself in the setup of each room as well.
Sound
Not only does the game feature brilliant visuals, it also features an equally stunning soundtrack. It is rather difficult to explain but the ambiance sound is calm and soothing while at the same time it can be utterly terrifying. When the time is right, the ambiance sound will build up suspension, allowing the player to know that something is about to happen. The game doesn’t have a narrative that gets explored thus is there is no spoken narration but it also lacks voice-overs which causes the game to be even more mysterious if that is possible.
Gameplay
Between Me and The Night offers full controller support which works like a charm but the player can always choose the traditional keyboard and mouse set-up if wanted. The latter one is played mostly with WASD for movement and shift for running. The mouse is your way of interacting with the various objects in each room. To get acquainted with the basic controls, the game begins with a simple tutorial that features the eerie atmosphere that comes back in the game itself albeit not as black-and-white.
At first you’ll play the game as if you were in a nightmare, revealing a surreal nightmarish gameplay experience but then the protagonist wakes up. The game continues like it has before except this time a day and night cycle provides wonderful sceneries and eerie monsters causing the game to have a good amount of tension without becoming a full-blown horror game.
The basic mechanics resemble much of the classic point and click puzzle games, where you need to gather items and combine them or place them on specific objects to solve the puzzles. There’s a very limited inventory system that has room for five small objects. Bigger objects require more space which can be a bit of a hassle since there are tons of items to interact with in each chapter. Not all objects are needed to solve a puzzle so there is a certain seek and find system in place. Oddly enough, the gameplay is very story-driven although it offers no true narrative.
Each chapter is divided by a mini-game in the likes of Skyrim where you are a knight, fighting his way through the enemies by blocking their attacks and killing them with your mighty sword. The combat during this stage of the game feels quite unresponsive and the movements are not really fluent but it’s a great way to mix the genre up a bit. The game also offers other mini-games such as a retro-inspired 8Bit action game that you can play on the protagonist’ SNES system. Without the story-driven gameplay and mini-games in-between chapters, Between Me and The Night would’ve been a simple yet brilliant point and click puzzle game.
There’s a huge lack of save points within the game as right now the game will only save once you’ve completed a chapter. Since certain puzzles can be a tad lengthy to figure out and bugs do appear once in a blue moon, it can be difficult to complete in one sitting. While this is not a game-breaking feature that is lacking, it is still incredibly annoying.
Conclusion
Between Me and The Night is a wonderful 2D side-scrolling adventure-like click and point puzzle game that offers just a tad more than the classics and is filled with references to games, artists such as Dali and even movies such as Kill Bill. The game showcases a surreal yet intriguing environment in the likes of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, allowing the game to stay rather casual yet stunning in its own uniquely creepy way with an ambiance sound that is simply to die for.
Between Me and The Night - Review,
No Comments