Nightfall

Eric Eve (2008)


Nightfall is a highly crafted, deeply implemented, atmospheric piece. It has a rich back-story that draws you in, as you discover an even deeper mystery about the threat of the Enemy. Showing that Eric Eve is once again in control of his narrative.

It starts out in a modern city, presumably somewhere in Great Britain, and is large in modern game standards, with 84 rooms making up the entire city. There's plenty of room for the player to explore here. Descriptions in this game need to be read closely. It's easy to miss important objects, with almost everything being placed within the room descriptions, not on its own separate line. This makes the game play a little harder than it needs to be, but it also makes for a cleaner narrative. It's a trade off that can be hard to balance.

The back-story is nicely laid out, with pieces of it unfolding as you travel to new areas of the city. Through it you get to know the protagonist and the other characters that made up his life. Mostly focusing on her, a woman that the PC has been in love with his entire life.

As the story unfolds, and you begin to unlock more areas, you begin to see a deeper mystery going on. This is handle quite well, but I had trouble finding certain objects in order to experience this due to the game having everything buried in the room descriptions. This is where I think the game play fell apart a little, and I had to dig through the walkthrough to get some of the key objects in order to finish the game. On the other hand, there is a hint system built in with the THINK command, that can go even deeper with THINK HARDER, that helped me through some of this, but eventually even that runs dry.

I found this to be a great game, which really is a game. It took me five hours to complete, but I did have to turn to the walkthrough at the end. It has lots of puzzles and lots of objects, with plenty to do and even more to uncover. It's solidly built, and besides the game play issues I ran into, I think it's near perfect. I didn't run into these problems before voting on the game, so I gave it a 10. But after playing it for another three hours I think that some of the in-game objects should be more accessible. There's room for improvement. My final rating is a 9.