Nightside Demo

There haven’t been all that many indie real-time strategy games to come along in recent times but most of what has made an appearance is worth playing. An example of a good indie RTS is Nightside, a sci-fi themed game that offers both a single-player campaign and online multiplayer matchups.

The first thing I can appreciate about Nightside is the nice designs for the alien structures and units. Inspiration can be seen from other games, but it all comes together well in Nightside and takes a unique form.

There are four races to play as, Nova, Human, YX, and Noxx, each one having similar evolution paths and units but entirely different looks. As you can imagine, the gameplay stays loyal to that of the classic titles and as such you have to mine for resources, build a base, deploy defenses, muster an army, and defeat your enemies by means of warfare.

It all works well, and the HUD makes the game intuitive and easy to handle by anyone who hasn’t played RTS titles before. Looked at as a whole, being an indie RTS, Nightside does very well for itself.

Nightside’s debut is a good one, or so it should be considered. There’s a lot that it has to offer, but there’s also a good deal of room for improvement. For one, combat might feel a bit too slow paced at some point and the lack of a rich sound effects bank doesn’t help at all.

The game needs polishing in both the visual and audio departments. Some of the animations play out a bit off in terms of how they look compared to what is happening. The audio effects feel a bit one-sided, but the soundtrack is very good, definitely a plus for the atmosphere.

One thing I especially liked about Nightside is the fact that all the bases are mobile, enabling players to attain a wider perspective when it comes to strategy and sneaky attacks.

If development to Nightside continues and manages to touch up pieces of the gameplay and aesthetics, there’s no going wrong with it. Even a slight boost in the game speed can make a huge difference to enjoyment.