Available in early access for a few months, Between Me and the Night was provided a month ago with an update that allows you to enjoy the adventure as a whole, the opportunity for me to give my impressions on a rather surprising title.
The game puts us in the shoes of a man at different stages of his life, who will live various experiences by visiting and interacting with the different objects present in the house where he lives. The house acts as a central hub and propels us into many environments where we will experience specific moments in the life of this man who seems on the verge of madness. It will therefore be up to the player to disentangle the real from the imaginary.
If there is a point on which BMatN is unassailable, it is at the level of its graphics. Nothing technically transcendent, but artistically, it's a little gem. The design seems simple enough at first glance, but the artists took the time to make each environment believable with many small details hidden here and there. The color scheme is also surprising, it is very colorful and quite unexpected given the history. Not unpleasant at all! The sound part is relatively discreet, small regret, we could have expected a little more from the studio in view of the polished Artistic Direction.
The universe, which constantly mixes real and imaginary, clearly serves the game, and makes it very pleasant to navigate. Each place visited is full of mysteries, each character encountered reinforces this uncertainty. Is it real, is it a dream, or a memory? These questions motivate us to continue the adventure, which is unfortunately not without flaws.
The interface to begin with, is clearly perfectible. The developers are working on this as I write this overview, but as it stands, it's laborious. You have to multiply the unnecessary clicks to succeed in moving and interacting properly with the decor (and it's not really better at the pad). It's quite frustrating, and it's not the starting tutorial that will help you better understand how to play. In addition, the game lets us go a little without a specific objective. Most of the time, we will find ourselves a little lost in the environment visited, it will be necessary to interact with each object of the decor, hoping for a reaction. Not really problematic either to have a title that does not take us by the hand, but the crappy saving system will force you to complete the puzzle so as not to lose the progress. Indeed, no manual saving here, the game will deign to save when you change location ... and in the absence of indication, it is not uncommon to spend 30-40 minutes in the same setting interacting with objects. available. Especially that BMatN does not allow you to store a lot of objects in the inventory ... 5 at most, and you will have to pay attention to the size of the objects: small, medium or large. For example, you can only carry a large object ... that will have to be put down before taking another, which has a good chance of not being used in the end. Small bug observed during my test: some objects go behind the scenery, which forces us to reload the last save, and makes us lose all our progress. Not great.
Difficult at present to advise Between Me and the Night. I really liked the game thanks to its history and superb art direction, but the numerous user interface hassles and poorly thought out save system will prevent many players from enjoying the title for its true worth. As noted above, this is still an Early Access game, and RainDance LX (the studio) continues to refine its title through updates to improve the interface. By the time of the official release, we can therefore expect the game to be fully functional and recommendable!
