The Night is Grey - A Dark Thriller About Escaping A Strange Forest Full Of Wolves

[WallaceChambers]

​

Graham is alone in a forest filled with strange wolves. While he’s fleeing for his life he finds a lost girl in an abandoned lodge that won’t survive without his help. Try to find their way to safety in this game filled with puzzles, engaging dialogue and innovative storyline.
But watch out: not everything is what it seems.

A cinematic thriller told through the classic perspective of point & click adventure games,
The Night is Grey is about modern storytelling fused together with hand-drawn animated characters, fully animated backgrounds and an original studio recorded music score.

Finally got a chance to play a bit of this game since there's a demo currently available during the "Steam Next Fest," which lasts until the 22nd. It nails the traditionally animated 2D look, which is a style I love, so I've been keeping an eye on it.

Now, having played the demo, I'm even more excited for this game since the writing is entirely competent. The puzzle design seems solid and the game is generally well polished and genuinely atmospheric. You can only tell so much in a ~40 minute snippet of game, but I really enjoyed what Whalestork Interactive has got so far.

There's a lot of object lines meant to characterize Graham as sort of a broken man. You can infer there's some misfortune along the lines of a failed relationship in his past. Most of these lines are pretty skillfully disseminated amidst the normal point & clicking such that you're getting to know him naturally as things progress. Others like "If only people stuck together as well as duct tape," I could probably do without.

Despite that, they did a good job with the relationship between Graham and Hannah, so far, and there's a lot of small uneasy mysteries that seem to be building to something bigger. Especially after watching the new trailer at the end (unfortunately not online yet), I'm eager to see the rest of the game. Which is coming this December.

 

[Duraframe300]

It's gonna be a rape allegory isn't it?
Or to formulate this better, that trailer and story bits gets me strongly pretentious vibes. And not of an actual profound kind.

Of course I could be way off base, will still wait until its released and some impressions are around for me to get interested in checking it out.

 

[lightbane]

You can check these two videos then:

 

[WallaceChambers]

New trailer which is different and actually better than the one at the end of the demo.

 

[OndrejSc]

 

[El Pollo Diablo]

Two stem reviewers mention "extremely frustrating logic" and "puzzles that don't particularly make much sense" which is in my book (fuck "logical" aka piss-easy aka game-journalist-friendly adventure game puzzles).

Anyway, added to my to-play list. The first entry of 2024, too.

 

[KafkaBot]

Damn, this game is already out? I genuinely thought it'd take even longer for it to be released.

Hopefully it will be as good as the demo suggested. Into my library it goes.

 

[toro]

Anyone playing this?

 

[KafkaBot]

Anyone playing this?

I bought it. Planning on giving it a spin this weekend.

 

[Great Deceiver]

I've played it for a couple of hours yesterday. Seems pretty good, I didn't cringe from the writing yet, which is a very rare thing. The visual style is a bit odd at first but it works. Line skipping is a little too slow for my tastes, but no big deal. There's been a couple of timed elements in puzzles so far (i.e. click within a certain range), didn't bother me.

 

[taxalot]

It's one of those games where the ending makes or break the game, it seems, so I'll wait for complete feedbacks.

 

[Great Deceiver]

Played a little bit more and so far the puzzles have been logical and satisfying. Definitely worth purchasing, clearly a labour of love and thankfully clear of poz, at least as far as I can tell.

It's a slow burner, though the premise is intriguing enough. The main characters don't make me want to hit them with a sledgehammer, so that's already better than 95% of all current games.

 

[KafkaBot]

Have been playing it and can also confirm that the game is quite satisfying. Doesn't hold your hand and actually tries to challenge you with some puzzles, which is great. Plot is quite intriguing, especially if you like slow burns.

Animations are a bit slow, which is a double-edged sword. Some animations are quite pretty and watching them is a delight, but that isn't always the case - and the greatest offender so far is the character's walking animation. Honestly, it's a bit janky, especially when he turns around or walks towards the sides of the monitor; thankfully, you can "fast travel" between screens with a click of the mouse, which alleviates the issue.

Backgrounds are gorgeous and much prettier than character animations. Characters themselves look nice, but the backgrounds are so much better that it sometimes reminded me of watching early Makoto Shinkai movies.

The only real complaint I have is with the dialogue fonts. They are atrocious and also appear to be rendered in 3D; when they were positioned close to a light source, I could actually see their shadows behind them. Seriously, I know this is a small team, but I have no idea how they felt those fonts were in any way visually appealing, especially when they clearly put a lot of effort into making the rest of their game look good.

All in all, I recommend it so far and hope this team gets to make many other games in the future. Will revise this post if the title somehow ends up completely fumbling the ball before the end.