The Night is Grey rushes onto your screen and grabs your attention. It’s immediately clear that something is wrong, and not just because Graham the main character is scared. It is because game nails the mood, that vague sense of something not being right, all the way through the demo.
Whalestork Interactive describes its debut point-and-click adventure game as a ‘Cinematic Thriller.’ And it truly is a beautiful game. Lush hand-drawn scenes and animation pull you into a deadly wolf-filled forest where nothing is what it seems.
Graham, a bespectacled middle-aged man is simply trying to find his way out to safety while protecting Hannah, a precocious little girl he stumbles across. Along with a beautiful soundtrack, you get pulled into his story as he tries to figure out the world around him.
The Personality In The Prose
When it comes to narrative design, one of the first things I always look at as a reader and nerd is the writing. The dialogues and the flow and, by the gods, does this game deliver! It is easily one of my favorite elements from the demo.
Graham and Hannah have clear personalities, and it is beautifully depicted within the dialogues. Each line is so valuable not only for what it says but also for what it doesn’t say. Graham as a narrator holds a lot of information to his chest, and we are literally dropped into the middle of his story.
For the player, it is uncomfortable and very clever. As a result of this decision, the game doesn’t give us any more information unless Graham has a reason to remark on it. He has a dry sense of humor and if he isn’t making an observation, he is trying to crack a joke to keep his spirits up. But since we immediately know we aren’t receiving all of the information we need, it makes you question everything.
This is one of the ways in which the demo delivers on its promises for the game. The art and music provide the atmosphere. The dialogues and the way they unfold based on the situation got me interested and curious. And this lack of information made me uneasy; it fed into the feeling of wrongness.
Sadly, that is where the demo stops showing what the studio promises.
The Unseen Promises
Whalestork is very clear that you will know little of the story. They want us all, as players, to explore and interact to discover what is going on. They do tell you that this will happen by solving puzzles and facing twists. Now while I don’t expect much in the way of a narrative twist in a demo, I did expect to see more of the final gameplay. Especially since the game is due to come out in a few days.
However, this two-year-old demo doesn’t really showcase any real puzzles or even how the narrative might layer. All we get is a fairly standard point-and-click narrative, and with it come all the pitfalls of the genre. Since the game needs you to click on items to learn more, you do need the spacebar focus mode to see what all can be interacted with. You will need to click on all of it multiple times as you go through.
The Annoying Logic Behind How The Character Interacts With Items
This is one of the more frustrating elements of this genre. Sometimes an object will only be something the character can and will pick up when they become ‘useful’ according to the narrative. But it isn’t always clear when the switch happens. Something that might seem obvious to the designer isn’t always clear to the player.
For instance, you have to use a rusty saw to get rid of some poison ivy. But why? Especially when the character says he doesn’t want to accidentally come in contact with the weed. And since the saw is missing a handle, what leap of logic will tell you that the butter knife is the obvious handle for it?
Of course, the game does mitigate some of this by dropping hints. Hannah for instance tells us that her crayons were thrown away telling us that we now needed to go search the trash Graham wanted to stay away from. But I can’t help but wonder if that will happen through the game, or if I will be left frustrated clicking at random to get out of a situation.
But that being said, The Night is Grey has some really cool mechanics that promise to change how you interact with the world. Within the story, once Graham finds Hannah, he can’t find it in himself to leave her behind. That’s fair; she is a little kid, all alone, and there are wolves plus some unnamed dangers. Graham takes her along by giving her a ride on his shoulders, which allows her to reach things that are too high. So it is clear that you will need her to look for items that will be out of reach and thus you will only be able to interact with some areas when she is with you.
An Old Demo For A Game That Would Have Evolved
The Night is Grey is a game with an old demo, one that was released in 2021 to be specific. But it’s a game that is coming out now, on January 5, 2024. The studio had originally intended to release this game earlier. But now, after almost 3 years, I wonder how this game might have evolved and if this demo even does this game justice.
That is not to say that I think the game might be hiding something. The demo was a beautiful experience, and if this old demo is so beautiful, I can’t help but wonder how much better it is now. Or what the other locations will look like, because this is a demo that was worth playing.
In less than an hour, I was completely hooked. I already have a lot of very strong feelings about the characters. For instance, I do not trust Hannah.
A lone girl left by her mother, who seems to punish her for random things, in the woods filled with suspicious, obviously weird wolves. Nuh-uh. I do not trust her. This seems like a horror trap, and I am not here for it. But I look forward to seeing if I am wrong.
I really hope that the rest of the game holds up to the promise of the demo.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Absolutely beautiful game with amazing backgrounds and animation | Some vague environment interaction, typical of the genre |
| Beautifully composed music that adds to the atmosphere | The demo doesn’t showcase all the promised elements of the game |
| A beautifully developed vibe, clever writing, and character creation | The demo doesn’t show a lot of what this story will be about. |
| Interesting gameplay elements that will change up how you can interact with scenes | |
| Promising narrative and mechanics. |
Rating: 7/10
