The night that speaks

In the past month, I’ve been saying that game jams are the best places to find innovation and creativity when it comes to gameplay. A lot of the time you’ll also find tons of humor in these blitzdev creations. I thought I’d take a break from saying that game jam products are great, but I can’t. Not when I keep coming across games like The night that speaks.

No, you don’t get to perform jump-scares on the monsters that are chasing you, that’s the next best thing. In The night that speaks you can gracefully raise your middle finger up into the air and flip 'em the bird until they psych out and leave you alone.

The game’s developers call it ‘focusing will’, because, you know, when you put your mind to it and are willing to flip off a ghoul, you will always succeed. I can’t really describe how simple and simply awesome this gameplay mechanic is.

And be honest, there were some horror games that scared the daylight out of you, and you instinctively showed your willpower to the computer screen. Being able to do that in the game takes away from the awkwardness of explaining why you’re throwing indecent gestures at the PC.

Even though it’s a game jam build that was created in four days by three people, The night that speaks surpasses a lot of first-person horror games from a multitude of perspectives. First off, yes, the visual style, although very nice, lessens the overall quality of the experience, but just by a bit. It’s also a matter of personal taste. I for one would have loved to have things a bit clearer, a bit more ‘resolutiony’. Then again, you could just resize the window to 640x480, and that solves this minor issue.

With that being said, props to the great atmosphere with excellent audio and sound effects. The gameplay is smooth, intuitive, and the scattered notes make it creepy enough to feel some tension. Throughout the game, you will be wandering inside a crypt of sorts, and two ghoulish creatures will stalk and kill you.

Listen to the chains, whispers, and other audio queues to know when they’re closing by, and when you come face to face, you lift that middle finger and tell them to f*** off because you’re not scared of them. Or so it would seem because the main character’s hand begins to shake when death’s near.

The only thing that could make this game better would be if you also had keys that triggered some cheeky remarks about absolute nonsense. I really want this to turn into something more. Its core gameplay mechanic is offensive, or at least some might think it is, we can’t argue with that. Still, it’s one fun and challenging game.