The Midnight Walk Review Moonhood Studios Handcrafted Claymation Visuals and Walking Simulator Mechanics Comprehensive Breakdown
Created by Moonhood Studios the founders of unconventional games such as Lost in Random and Ghost Giant, The Midnight Walk is an assured and atmospheric dark fantasy saga that kicks off straight away. Presenting a collection of twisted tales in five to eight hours, The Midnight Walk offers something different for classic flat gaming. But does its engaging content live up to its striking style.
If there is one undeniable victory in this game, it is the art direction. Borrowing the weird, yet welcoming aesthetic of traditional stop motion animated movies that calls to mind The Nightmare Before Christmas, Coraline and Wallace and Gromit, the world is made entirely from real clay. Everything in the game, the environment, main characters, and monsters were carefully hand sculpted, 3D scanned into Unreal Engine 5 and animated to feel just like the movement of stop motion.
The end product is a feast for the eyes. Be it exploring a menacing forest or talking to a freaked out denizen, nothing brings the mood to life quite like the personality oozing from every aspect of atmosphere. That is helped by some brilliant spatial 3d audio and a vast, emotionally stirring orchestral soundtrack that rises and falls in perfect... At its best, playing a quality set of headphones is a must, not just a requirement.
You play as the Burnt One or traveler to be walking along a treacherous shadow highway. Along in dark companion of Potboy a sweet little creature in the form of lantern who helps to light the way. The story weaves as a 7 part series of anthology told in the gentle voice of dark bedtime stories.
The game excels through its micro stories rather than one huge, epic plot. You will find strange places like a village full of talking heads and engage in conflict with misunderstood creatures such as the Mulgra. The game presents a fully realized world through audio reels and the witty dialogue of its fully voiced NPCs, a world full of revenge, depression and acceptance. Though the ultimate destination may seem a little disjointed for some people, the game ends on a thoughtful note with two endings similar in emotion to Journey or in particular.
Where The Midnight Walk comes a little bit unstuck is in the interactivity department. The game is firmly rooted in walking simulator territory, which is not necessarily a bad thing, but this is desperately crying out for puzzle adventure gameplay.
You do not even have direct control over Potboy, as all you can do is order him to stand on pressure plates or light certain braziers. The puzzles are baffling, they tend to be dirt easy, with a handful barely taking a moment of thought to solve. Then there is the fact that the game introduces mechanics it constantly leaves by the wayside. In chapter 2 you get a match firing hand cannon, then the game forgets it is there.
Enemy encounters are not much different. The enemy is single faceted throughout the campaign. Dodging them becomes very primitive with Stealth tossing a distraction, shutting your eyes to freeze them or hiding in a closet and waiting it out. There is no transition of danger nor mechanics so the game begins to run stale before the credits even roll.
Pc Version Tested.
Disclosure: We received a free review copy of this product from Devs
