Slight Spoiler Warning
The Night is Grey is an indie point and click survival game made by Whalestork. The game itself is visually very beautiful and the music is lovely to listen to, as well. I found most of my issues with the gameplay, story, and the protagonist himself.
Starting with the gameplay, I found the first two chapters pretty fun, and honestly didn’t mind the backtracking too much… Though having to double-check the same items to get a second dialogue response to THEN get a necessary item to move forward is a bit annoying, but I didn’t have too much of an issue with it. The real gameplay issues started popping up for me in chapter 3, where your character has to start going through this awful maze that has your character DIE if he doesn’t find a room with an oil barrel to keep his lantern lit. A lot of the time, you have to take guesses for the next room you enter as you don’t know if it will have an oil barrel or not, but you sure as hell better mark it down, since the oil lamp runs out after searching 3-4 rooms!! I just started saving whenever I found a room with an oil barrel. I had issues understanding the last two puzzles in the game after chapter 3, but that’s probably more of an issue for me as I’m usually an idiot when it comes to that stuff, so I had to look up the answers.
The story and the protagonist disappointed me as it followed a formula I usually love! I’m a die hard fan of “adult man that has to protect and take care of a little girl trying to survive”, but the protagonist, Graham (but he looks so much like Matt Walsh that I unfortunately kept thinking his name was Matt LOL), is so unpleasant to be tied to, and is an awful dick to the poor little girl he’s trying to help (even though the ending helps explain some of that) that I hated having to constantly hear him be so annoying and swear, swear, swear at her! I’m no prude to swearing, but Jesus Christ, all this guy does is swear! It gets annoying. It reminds me of shows like Hazbin Hotel that try to add edge and grit to their series, so they just have the character swear every other word. It would have worked better with the story if maybe he started swearing more towards the end to hint towards the ending, instead of kind of spoiling it from the start, as the way he acted immediately had me suspicious.
You can tell there’s a lot of love and passion put into The Night is Grey; the artstyle is gorgeous (and the reason why it caught my interest in the first place!) and the music is lovely throughout it all. They clearly had a plan for how they wanted the story to be and wrote accordingly, I just don’t think it was a good match for what I personally enjoy. The ending was fine… but to me, it came off more as them not knowing how to end it and creating a loop instead. There’s definitely worse endings out there, but there’s also definitely better ones, too. Check out The Night is Grey if you’re interested, but I wouldn’t go in expecting anything extraordinary.
2/5
The Night is Grey is an indie point and click survival game made by Whalestork. The game itself is visually very beautiful and the music is lovely to listen to, as well. I found most of my issues with the gameplay, story, and the protagonist himself.
Starting with the gameplay, I found the first two chapters pretty fun, and honestly didn’t mind the backtracking too much… Though having to double-check the same items to get a second dialogue response to THEN get a necessary item to move forward is a bit annoying, but I didn’t have too much of an issue with it. The real gameplay issues started popping up for me in chapter 3, where your character has to start going through this awful maze that has your character DIE if he doesn’t find a room with an oil barrel to keep his lantern lit. A lot of the time, you have to take guesses for the next room you enter as you don’t know if it will have an oil barrel or not, but you sure as hell better mark it down, since the oil lamp runs out after searching 3-4 rooms!! I just started saving whenever I found a room with an oil barrel. I had issues understanding the last two puzzles in the game after chapter 3, but that’s probably more of an issue for me as I’m usually an idiot when it comes to that stuff, so I had to look up the answers.
The story and the protagonist disappointed me as it followed a formula I usually love! I’m a die hard fan of “adult man that has to protect and take care of a little girl trying to survive”, but the protagonist, Graham (but he looks so much like Matt Walsh that I unfortunately kept thinking his name was Matt LOL), is so unpleasant to be tied to, and is an awful dick to the poor little girl he’s trying to help (even though the ending helps explain some of that) that I hated having to constantly hear him be so annoying and swear, swear, swear at her! I’m no prude to swearing, but Jesus Christ, all this guy does is swear! It gets annoying. It reminds me of shows like Hazbin Hotel that try to add edge and grit to their series, so they just have the character swear every other word. It would have worked better with the story if maybe he started swearing more towards the end to hint towards the ending, instead of kind of spoiling it from the start, as the way he acted immediately had me suspicious.
You can tell there’s a lot of love and passion put into The Night is Grey; the artstyle is gorgeous (and the reason why it caught my interest in the first place!) and the music is lovely throughout it all. They clearly had a plan for how they wanted the story to be and wrote accordingly, I just don’t think it was a good match for what I personally enjoy. The ending was fine… but to me, it came off more as them not knowing how to end it and creating a loop instead. There’s definitely worse endings out there, but there’s also definitely better ones, too. Check out The Night is Grey if you’re interested, but I wouldn’t go in expecting anything extraordinary.
2/5