Night Book is a game I’ve been looking forward to for a long time. As a fan of smaller indie titles, I was a little worried that the experience would be too small to really get me invested in the story, but I’m happy to say that I wasn’t disappointed.
Night Book is an atmospheric adventure game that was released in July 2016 for the PS4. The story follows a young boy named Ludo, who is haunted by the specter of his father’s death. As Ludo slowly unravels the mystery, he discovers that he has the power to travel between the real world and the realm of dreams.
I’ve been playing Night Book for the Playstation 4. It’s an interesting VR game, which has an interesting premise and a relatively short length. As a result, I can’t recommend this game to everyone. I think there could be a lot of potential with Night Book, and I can see the benefits of playing this on Playstation VR, but at the moment it’s just not always fun or interesting.. Read more about night book and let us know what you think.
With titles like Late Shift and The Complex, a criminal thriller and a sci-fi thriller, respectively, Wales Interactive has created a niche with its interactive movies over the last several years. I may not believe all of their games are great, but I have to commend them on their genre diversity and production quality. Night Book, their most recent release, is yet another totally new take on FMV games, this time in the form of a horror film. Regrettably, they chose some of the most cliched and low-budget horror films…
A or B is your option. Keep an eye on the story as it develops. You will come to regret your choice. Repeat.
The fact that Night Book is an interactive film is not a flaw. Wales Interactive’s gimmick is working for them, and they’re succeeding in their area. This is the standard game in which you watch a remarkably well-acted film and make choices based on two options at a time, producing a butterfly effect. The game’s general “replayability” (if that’s a word) stems from the fact that you may construct a variety of alternative stories and results depending on your choices. The issue is the kind of horror film they’ve chosen to make.
For all intents and purposes, Night Book is an interactive Blumhouse horror film. No, it’s not a remake of one of their excellent horror films, such as Get Out, Insidious, or Sinister. Instead, it’s strongly influenced by nonsense like Paranormal Activity and, most notably, Unfriended, a film built completely on Skype chat windows. Even before the narrative began to emerge, I was becoming weary of staring at the game, which was completely set on a computer screen, complete with chat windows and CCTV video depicting the events of the film.
During these text-only portions, I wish you could turn off the closed captioning.
I understand why the game chose such a graphic approach. Night Book was completely created (and in this instance, shot) during the epidemic, according to the creators. People couldn’t readily shoot in studios, therefore they, like everyone else on the planet, had to work remotely. Unfortunately, in this instance, it just backfired. Even if the picture quality isn’t half-bad, it’s difficult to make such a concept aesthetically believable. Even in the movies that inspired this game in the first place, it wasn’t aesthetically attractive.
Loralyn, the heroine of Night Book, is an internet-based translator who earns a livelihood by providing real-time translations of English and French conversations. She is, nevertheless, someone who speaks an old ceremonial language from a location where she and her father grew up. When she is duped into translating a chapter from a book, she unwittingly summons an evil ghost that begins to torment her, her unborn child, her mentally ill father, and even her husband who is stationed overseas. What follows is a sequence of jumpscares, CCTV malfunctions, and sometimes smart editing methods designed to give the impression that something frightening is happening on. Unfortunately, this film/game was not at all frightening. Neither is it tense. Neither is it interesting.
I don’t necessarily blame the actors, however. They perform an excellent job. The acting is good, and main actress Julie Dray tries her best to portray a lady divided between a terrible profession, a fiancé going overseas, dealing with a mentally ill father, and the little matter of being pregnant. Regrettably, the story is much too predictable. The remainder of the cast is uninteresting to say the least. And, yikes, there are a lot of jumpscares and strong bursts of noise, as in Paranormal Activity.
This man is a blessing. With such little material, he does a lot.
Night Book is clearly the worst of the group when compared to the rest of Wales Interactive’s, well, interactive movies. I have nothing against the performances or the fact that there isn’t a lot of interaction in this film, but its clichéd Blumhouse-esque concept and repetitive graphics irritated me to no end. It’s not a very compelling tale, and none of the characters drew me in or made me care about them. Unlike The Complex, which I can suggest to fans of the genre, I don’t believe Night Book will appeal to everyone.
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CCTV video and Zoom calls aren’t quite as engaging as the high-resolution photos seen in Late Shift or The Complex. |
Night Book, like its predecessors, is all about deciding between choices A and B and dealing with the consequences of your decisions. |
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Despite having excellent sound mixing and acting, Night Book is littered with loud bangs and the odd jumpscare. |
Its gameplay loop may irritate some, but the biggest issue is its Blumhouse-style horror structure, which is packed of irritating genre clichés. |
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Final Score: 6.0 |
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Night Book is now available on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC, and Nintendo Switch.
PS4 was used for this review.
The publisher supplied me with a copy of Night Book.
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