Night Game is an original puzzle game set as a side-scrolling platformer. The game is visually striking, has great music, and is different from other puzzle games we’ve played in the past. This Wii-exclusive title finally cashes in on the promises of third-party developed novel gameplay to owners, even though the controls use the NES configuration of the Wii-mote.

Setting out to discover what we could about Night Game, one of the first things we learned is that we want a copy. The game, however, won’t be called “Night Game” at release, so we’ll keep an eye on it for you and let you know what to look for. Until then, we’ll just have to make it through based on what we learned about the game at the GDC.

Your goal is to navigate from one side of the screen to the other, like a traditional platformer. Like many puzzle games, the challenge is not in that there are enemies populating the screen, but instead that moving from the left to the right itself is a challenge. That, however, is where similarities to most games on the market end.

The player controls a “mysterious sphere” that has two basic abilities: to roll left and to roll right. There are also three context-sensitive abilities: dash, increase friction, and reverse gravity; on some screens, one of these abilities will be on all the time. Gameplay emerges from your interaction with your terrain and objects around you. You can use your friction command to stay on a cart as it rolls downhill, for example, or you can land in a vehicle and use your awesome rolling powers for justice to spin gears in the machine to make it move forward. The game also takes advantage of the fact that you’re a ball in other ways: one of the early screens we saw at the GDC featured pinball-style flippers, which were the only thing the player was allowed to control.

Developer Nicklas Nygren
Photo by Kate McKiernan

While part of the game is figuring out what is going on with your sphere, Night Game is going to appeal to gamers more than game like Blueberry Garden, because the side-scrolling platform architecture gives the player a familiar reference for success. While you may not know what’s going on in the story of the game, after the tutorial level you should understand the game. There is also a checkpoint every three screens, so should you fall down a pit, you’re not punished overly much.

The music in Night Game is a big part of the experience, and developer Nicklas Nygren, who we spoke to at the GDC, wanted to make sure his composer got some attention. It was Nygren who specifically sought composer Chris Schlarb after hearing some of his music. This game has a lot of music, and Nygren and Schlarb collaborated to make everything fit together.

Inspired by marble rolling games and often visually compared to the widely popular World of Goo (which wasn’t out when the game was conceived) and the other IGF title cast in silhouette, FEIST (about which Nygren was not aware, either), Night Game is a title Wii owners can look forward to seeing released this year.

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Tags:   GDC 2009 · platformer · puzzleNo Comments

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