Anyone pick up White Night?

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matt
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Anyone pick up White Night?

Post by matt »

It has a Sin City style black and white shading and is released on Steam and consoles today. I can't find any reviews (user or otherwise), but it seems like it could be cool. I'm not going to have a chance to check it out for a while. I'm moving and still have Metro Last Light to finish. I also imported Siren: New Translation (aka Blood Curse) because the US version was edited, so I am itching to try that. :)
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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evilkinggumby
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Re: Anyone pick up White Night?

Post by evilkinggumby »

I have not heard of this but I like the art style. I'll keep it on my radar!!
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RightClickSaveAs
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Re: Anyone pick up White Night?

Post by RightClickSaveAs »

Bought it on a whim and spent a couple hours with it so far. It's really atmospheric and has a great style to the art. It's sort of a black and white Resident Evil, without any combat (that I've seen yet) and with a focus on the exploration and puzzle solving. The puzzles so far haven't been too difficult, but I'm not terribly far in yet.

One complaint is, the style can cause things to get lost in the screen, and make you miss objects you need. But I'm intrigued so far. It's got some really frightening moments and a sense of dread woven into the core of the game, which is nice to see. Not really jump-scarey at all at this point, either.
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matt
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Re: Anyone pick up White Night?

Post by matt »

I feel like they had a lot of bad luck releasing it both during GDC AND the same day Five Nights at Freddy's 3 came out... Maybe I'll check it out one of these days, but my backlog of games is so large at the moment, and I'm getting ready to move, which eats into my gaming time. haha

Let me know what you think when you finish the game!
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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RightClickSaveAs
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Re: Anyone pick up White Night?

Post by RightClickSaveAs »

I finished this up, I feel it took me way longer than the average though. It ended up being a really mixed experience for me.

First off, it looks fantastic. They do a lot of great things stylistically with the monochromatic presentation and lighting.

The story is fairly interesting, although predictable in one of the major twists. It felt like they were really trying to sell this as some MIND BLOWING plot point, but it's been done a lot before, and I had an idea of what was going on early in the game. Also a lot of the backstory is told through journals, which I'm getting kinda tired of in game design. The noir voice over was neat for the most part, but got kinda heavy handed after a while. There's only so many different ways you can say stuff like "The darkness was pressing in on me, shadows reaching out from the past like specters of my failed memories". I get it, night, amnesia, metaphors.

The gameplay gets really bad towards the end though. You'll see a lot of mention online about cheap deaths, and they really do get cheap. There's an attic part that was the worst for me where you have to navigate through the room to find an item you need, but the place is filed with ghosts, and if they grab you, it's back to the last save point. The biggest problem is it's almost impossible to see the ghosts due to the darkness making them blend into the shadows, and the camera angles that are forced on you, so there's a lot of frustrating trial and error.

The puzzles aren't too difficult, most of them are fairly simple, but there are places where it's easy to miss items or sections of room. The art style makes everything get lost in the scene. I really wish they'd done something like you did with Neverending Nightmares and colored all the interactive items. But they were really strictly adhering to the black and white style, the only color comes from candle flames and lights, and that really hurts it from a gameplay perspective.

So I'd half recommend it with the caveat that there are at least a few frustrating parts dragging the overall experience down.
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matt
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Re: Anyone pick up White Night?

Post by matt »

Thanks for the review! I appreciate it. :) I'm thinking about having letters, notes, newspaper articles, etc. to expand out the world. Are you sick of game stories being told with text or just the thing that someone's journal happened to be scattered randomly throughout the world - often where they have no business being? We are trying to keep most things in locations that would make "sense' with a few exceptions given that is a nightmare.

What do you think about that?

Thanks!
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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RightClickSaveAs
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Re: Anyone pick up White Night?

Post by RightClickSaveAs »

Yeah my feeling is more about someone's journals just happening to be lying around all over the place as you move through the game. I still think text can be used very well to tell stories, and is often the best choice. In White Night though, I think they overdid it, you have 3 or 4 main characters who you learn about through their journal entries as you move through the house, and the things are everywhere! There's something like 24 entries to find for just one of the main characters, and they can get wordy.

One other thing they did though was to use newspapers to show what was going on in the larger world at the time that tied into the story, I think that was done well and I would have liked to see more of those.

I think fleshing out the world more is definitely a good idea, especially when there's variety to the way it's done.
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matt
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Re: Anyone pick up White Night?

Post by matt »

My goal with the next game is to focus on building out the world more so than the character because I think the world gives insight into the character but is interesting on its own as well as can make the game scarier where as reading about the character's background isn't necessarily scary. Fortunately, it's fairly easy to flesh out the world since it's based on a real place, folklore, and culture, so I just have to research it. :)
-Matt Gilgenbach
Lead Frightener at Infinitap Games
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