Midnight Walk Review – IGN

At the beginning, the story begins, with darkness and then fire. In Judeo-Christian mythology, the first thing God has to do is let the light drive away the dark nothingness. Most of human achievements are based on the use of fires: the ability to cook food, keep warm and travel to space. Sit around telling stories. The language of creativity is the language of flame; inspiration is “spark”. It’s impossible for me to not think about this when I play Midnight Walk, a dark puzzle horror adventure with a creepy stop-motion animation style that needs to be compared with Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. But developers Moon Studio know that fire is not only about illuminating the way forward. It consumes, burns, destroys. If you are in the wrong position at the wrong time, a little match will burn the world. Midnight walking is not mechanically complicated, but its story will become a reality. As I walk through its amazing, often emotionally devastating world, I am glad to walk on the bleak path before me.

Its eight-hour journey begins with your character, about to burn, rising from the grave, receiving eyes and ears from another creature, being able to see and hear. At first, your mission is not clear; you just want to survive. The world of midnight walking is an eternal night, stalking by creepers – creatures with excessive limbs, whose movements intertwined, stuttered and wrong. You escape from them, hide in the closet, close your eyes to take off the door. Light up matches, light candles, light roads. Close your eyes and listen, and the hidden things may be revealed.

Your ways of interacting with the world are limited but consistent, and the midnight walk is cleverly built on them, twisting them in fun ways. Matches can light candles to solve puzzles, but they can also illuminate your way. The wardrobe can hide you in the creeper and serve as a doorway between other wardrobes. Shooting match guns can help light candles and solve distant puzzles. Before closing your eyes, look at something and turn them on to find that the thing that blocks your way has disappeared. When you don't look for it, the world often changes, or you may have been shipped. It's simple, but it's fun because midnight walks constantly use rules, modify and add and shape old things, usually in ways I didn't expect (and don't want to spoil here).

Therefore, even if there are accidental situations during this journey, the gameplay is simple. Sometimes you are forced into an awkward “sneaking away from the terrible creepers and/or grinners” segment, which can be frustrating, but the checkpoints are generous, which is just annoying in the worst case.

When you meet Potboy, you will find your soul on a midnight walk, a living piece of pottery capable of carrying fire, the most precious resource in a world without a sun. At first, Potboy was afraid of you, who could blame him? It was dark at night, hungry, and I wanted to swallow him all the time, because the monster was like fire. They like the taste.

But once you make him trust you – the way to the Porter boy’s heart is through his belly – the story does begin. As a burning job, your job is to escort him to the Moon Hill, where you may repair things so that the world is free from the rule of darkness itself. Of course, this story is more complicated than this. You will see many broken potboys along the way, and some sarcophagus are ready to resurrect. It's obvious that all of this has happened and all of this will happen again. If you are cautious and diligent, you can perceive the truth of things and all of them are worth it.

After a while, I began to worry about when Potboy would run away or be ahead of me or we would be separated. Yes, yes, yes, but he is also my companion, and the world is very unfriendly. If nothing else, I hope he is fine. When you order him to light something or stand somewhere, it feels like it's because he trusts you because he trusts you – it's his way of looking back to make sure you're still there and everything is OK. I think it's worth it.

One of the things I appreciate most about midnight walking is stopping to explain to you how reluctant things are. The characters in this world talk to you like they live here, rather than assigning knowledge to uninspired people, and even the narratives you encounter are more concerned with storytelling than making sure you know what each word means. Understanding comes from attention, from discovering Shell scattered around the world and listening to stories stored in it. They often don't tell you who is talking. You have to figure it out yourself. By doing this, you begin to understand what the world is, how it is implemented and where you are.

This is where I sing in the midnight walk: in the story and in the characters. Everyone modeled with real-world clay and crafting materials, then scanned and animate to resemble traditional stop motion techniques. There are two heads of fortune tellers worshiping the fire and trying to guide you along its path, assigning their wisdom before disappearing. This mysterious Soulfisher is said to be bigger than almost everything in the fire to provide companionship and advice. He seemed to be waiting for something. Housy, your walking house, is your companion, the home of what you find, and can also breathe from the darkness itself. And more – some people will meet some before they understand who they are or what they are doing, while others will become old friends or strange, threatening acquaintances.

The way these characters interact, the stories you see when you travel to Moon Mountain make the midnight walk memorable. A head village that is invisible, defined by their past sins, hopes to avoid retribution. A creature, the last creature consumed by sadness. A town destroyed by missed acts of revenge, hoping to put its ghosts on hold. A little girl who lit up because they reminded her of the stars. One of the stories, the inner story of the craftsman, didn’t hit me like the ones that were before or followed, mainly because the story was told you, not what you experienced, but even with its moments.

Even if these stories are flawed, they are what keep the game in sorrow, loss, fear and misunderstanding. The boundaries of this world are attracted by pain. You can't do this correctly; the past is the past. But you can ignite a game and relieve pain, providing warmth and comfort to the soul in need. Potboy can help recover extinguished fires. Together, you can move the needle a little. You can witness it. These stories are worth listening to.

When we talk about video games, we overuse the word “movie”, but midnight walks are not a rare attempt in most games. It doesn't do it by reveling in conversation or suffocating you in cutscenes. Instead, it sets a scene that attracts the eyes, fools your eyes and makes you feel that all of this is unfolding organically when in fact it has been crafted and it seems to be. This is one of the most visual arrest games I've ever played, but always serves stories, worlds and characters. Midnight Walk supports VR (via Steam VR or PlayStation VR2), and while I didn't play that way, I guess it's great. That said, sometimes, midnight walks limit how you move so that it can render an image or a scene, and while I can't specifically point out what Midnight Walk wants to show me, it can feel weird to lose control and invisible obstacles.

However, even its flaws, when I see the ending of the Midnight Walk and the game itself, it hardly affects my feelings. I really like one, and I think anyone who sees both will know what I mean. The world is more important than it seems, and this story is very complicated, and I think it only reflects this. But another feels so real, and my time on the midnight walk has had such a big impact on me that these flaws feel like roots that may trip over while hiking in the woods, or pebbles that squirt into shoes. Maybe there is less experience, but that's not what you remember.