Four strangers strike up a conversation at a masquerade ball on a luxurious train travelling through the icy night. The one thing they seem to have in common is that none of them can quite remember how they ended up here. However, as it turns out, that's not quite the only commonality they share.
Through this framing device, we jump back into each stranger's past to the moment that lead them to this spot. This kind of horror anthology is surprisingly rare in video games and as a fan of the format, I think Winter's Night... does a remarkable job initially of telling several seemingly disparate stories that stand on their own but become stronger through their thematic connections.
I say "initially" because I think the game botches the landing with an incredibly out-of-place tonal shift in literally the last minute of the story. Winter's Night is a dark game, dealing with just about every rotten aspect of humanity in gory detail. Homophobia, jealousy, grief, murder, suicide, addiction, torture, war, cowardice. In the short run-time, the story is unflinching in how macabre its willing to get to truly plumb the depth of its protagonists' suffering.
Which is why it's so jarring when the story suddenly swerves off the tracks and becomes a comedy, albeit still with a dark twist. I want to emphasise that nothing leading up to the very final moments have been anything like a dark comedy, so to have the framing device shift into this mode at the very end feels like if Hereditary suddenly ended like an episode of Tales from the Crypt. Abrupt, incongruous, and almost a little tasteless, given the subject matters that precedes it.
I genuinely am not happy to focus on the negative here. If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers is a genuinely haunting and memorable experience. It's well-written and constantly surprising, even once you start to figure out how the stories tie together, and the art is truly spectacular. I want to see more of this kind of game, and I'm especially excited to see more from Dead Idle Games.
I want to make it very clear that I recommend it to anybody who might enjoy a unique, gruesome interactive narrative - not to mention that it's free! Which makes it all the sadder that I walked away from that ghastly train on that cold night with a bad taste in my mouth.
Through this framing device, we jump back into each stranger's past to the moment that lead them to this spot. This kind of horror anthology is surprisingly rare in video games and as a fan of the format, I think Winter's Night... does a remarkable job initially of telling several seemingly disparate stories that stand on their own but become stronger through their thematic connections.
I say "initially" because I think the game botches the landing with an incredibly out-of-place tonal shift in literally the last minute of the story. Winter's Night is a dark game, dealing with just about every rotten aspect of humanity in gory detail. Homophobia, jealousy, grief, murder, suicide, addiction, torture, war, cowardice. In the short run-time, the story is unflinching in how macabre its willing to get to truly plumb the depth of its protagonists' suffering.
Which is why it's so jarring when the story suddenly swerves off the tracks and becomes a comedy, albeit still with a dark twist. I want to emphasise that nothing leading up to the very final moments have been anything like a dark comedy, so to have the framing device shift into this mode at the very end feels like if Hereditary suddenly ended like an episode of Tales from the Crypt. Abrupt, incongruous, and almost a little tasteless, given the subject matters that precedes it.
I genuinely am not happy to focus on the negative here. If On A Winter's Night, Four Travelers is a genuinely haunting and memorable experience. It's well-written and constantly surprising, even once you start to figure out how the stories tie together, and the art is truly spectacular. I want to see more of this kind of game, and I'm especially excited to see more from Dead Idle Games.
I want to make it very clear that I recommend it to anybody who might enjoy a unique, gruesome interactive narrative - not to mention that it's free! Which makes it all the sadder that I walked away from that ghastly train on that cold night with a bad taste in my mouth.