Interactive Movie Time! Hey, we’ve done a few of these already, and I love them, so let’s give Night Book a go! This time, we look at an interactive thriller about an online interpreter who is tricked into reading an ancient book that summons a demon into her home. Enter ‘Night Book’.
Night Book
Loralyn works the night shift remotely from her home, live interpreting video calls from English to French and back again. Currently pregnant, with a husband working far away and caring for her mentally ill father, she is desperately trying to keep her family together and safe – but who is she prepared to sacrifice to survive? The fiancé, the baby, her father, or herself?
Wales Interactive
Like the other titles from Wales Interactive, Nightbook is one of those one-story, with several different paths and ending games. We did most of them, and some of my favorites were The Complex and Five Dates. One thing that I have to hand Wales Interactive is that the whole game was shot remotely during the lockdown – with actors in Paris, London, Birmingham, and Cardiff, using Blackmagic cameras and event recording technology; the actors filmed themselves and were responsible for their lighting, make-up, and continuity. And a fine cast with both Julie Dray (Avenue 5) and Colin Salmon (Resident Evil, Mortal Engines).
Gameplay
Evidently, as a result of the remote production, the entire story takes over webcams, as online interpreter Loralyn (Julie Dray) works a night shift from her flat. She interprets video calls for clients, all while dealing with being pregnant, having a fiancée working on a lucrative land development deal far away, and caring for her mentally unwell father. Ultimately her fiancée’s work brings some unwanted supernatural attention Loralyn’s way, as she ends up tricked into reading from an ancient book that invites a malevolent presence into her home. It’s up to the player to try and figure out how to keep it at bay or risk losing Loralyn’s soul to it.
Fans of prior Wales games will know the score right away; you watch high-definition video footage unfold while periodically responding to typically one of two branching decisions, each offering up either distinct or mild variations to the ongoing story.
Experimenting
The fun, in theory, is in going back and experimenting with different narrative permutations, which the game smartly encourages by allowing you to skip previously watched scenes with the press of a button, ensuring you don’t need to slog through the 45-minute story again ad nauseam. An in-game tracker also keeps a count of the 15 endings and 223 scenes you’ve unlocked so far.
Though Night Book clearly has just a fraction of the budget afforded to Late Shift or The Complex, it gives a handsome first impression. The video quality is higher than is common for FMV (Full Motion Video) games – even if very few people in the world actually have webcams that look this good – yet belies the generally thrown-together feel of the project otherwise.
Lockdown
The story takes place primarily in a few small sets with almost entirely locked-off cameras. Presumably, due to the pandemic, Loralyn and her father are never seen interacting on-screen together despite residing in the same apartment. The story conveniently keeps her father sequestered away in his own room as he combats mental illness (and worse), and it’s never even slightly convincing as anything more than a practical necessity of the production.
