Update One Hundred and Thirteen: 17 January 2017
Between Me and the Night
7.7 hours, 18 of 18 achievements
4/10 (wolfborn8 please don't tell your dev friend I did not like their game; tell them I thought the visuals were lovely)
☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆
Between Me and the Night is a point n click adventure-y 2D game with pretty visuals, a murky story, and clunky as hell controls.
I… really disliked the game at first, and after I settled into the controls that dislike only improved to mild discomfort. I just don’t think I got this game. I struggled with it a bit, and had some unfair shakes. Some of the game is poorly telegraphed, and sometimes I’d enter a room or spawn on top of a monster, giving me no time to do anything but die. Dealing with the roaming monsters and the final jumping puzzle at the end felt frustrating rather than fun.
The story - such as it is - is very vague in a way I find unsatisfying. You play a boy… exploring his memories? while being haunted by ghosts and monsters, always drawn toward this sinister arcade cabinet. The arcade cabinet sucks him in and he becomes a Sword and Sworcery-like warrior, traversing snowy terrain, fighting a handful of enemies (this felt very unpolished) and climbing towers. You follow him through childhood, teenagerhood, and then finally as an adult. I didn’t feel particularly connected to anything that was happening.
I don’t know, I didn’t like it. I’m glad its over.
Next up:
See you soon!
Agree with this.
On release I had this game on my wishlist and got it later at 10$ or something.
I loved the soundtrack and artstyle but the controls where awful and it hat so many bugs in the game…
Also they abandoned the game pretty soon without any bugfixes.
Alright, so now I can finally say I didn’t like Between Me and the Night in the slightest. I didn’t even bother finishing the first house/scenario thing ^^
OH MY GOD thank goddddddd I felt SOOOO BAD the entire time I was like ‘no wolfborn8’s dev friend worked hard on this I should finish it’.
OHhhh nooooo what did you tell them? Did you tell them?
I actually haven’t spoken to him in years, but I’d have no issues with telling him that you know, I understand this was their first proper game, but still, the controls are awful and I personally didn’t find interacting with things in the environment to be interesting– and neither was the story. I’m very blunt and straightforward :D
Yeah, it really did feel like their first game. And, aesthetically? They knocked it out of the park, it LOOKS very professional, but actually physically playing the game brought the experience way down.
And, like, me? I love interacting with shit - but why they had interacting with shit be a different ‘screen’ (like, ya boy stops and looks and only then can you interact with stuff) I’ll never know. Most of the time I’d click to interact, then groan, click out, and move over a few steps bc I was out of reach. The system of literally every other point and click of ‘click and object and your character will walk over to it and interact with it’ isn’t really something that’s worth trying (and failing) to do something new with.
What IS good though is now that the team has more experience under their belt, I would look at playing another game of theirs.
Yeah, the game looks really nice, but the whole system they came up with for interacting with stuff is beyond me; it just doesn’t make any sense at all, it’s just a chore. They don’t have any other games on steam, but hopefully they can release a new one at some point. There’s no gaming industry in Portugal, though, everything is still very early on and rudimentary, with barely any budget.
Anyway, hopefully you’ll have more fun with Candle! I’ve also played that one, so I’ll let you know what I thought when you post about it :)