Hellnight is a cool little horror game with a lot of unique concepts and some not-so-unique ones done with varying levels of success.
You take the last train home alongside some highschool girl, but something happens and it crashes down into the sewers, where you get chased by a creature into a secret underground town built under Tokyo during Imperial times, called TOKYOMESH, because it's a mesh of tunnels put together in a maze-like structure. Your objective is to get out back to the surface, but it seems every exit you find only takes you deeper underground...
The gameplay is nothing special. First person tank controls, you gotta explore the locations while evading encounters with the monster chasing you. You're always faster than him when running, but your character gets tired fast, so you gotta plan out your dashes well. There are tons of weird NPCs you talk to for key items, or just general exposition and lore. And some which are just weirdos. They're all really cool and very "90s PS1 game"-y. I guess an easy comparison would be calling it "PS1 Amnesia".
What's really interesting is the "lives" system. You die on contact, but if you have a partner (one of the characters you meet underground) they serve as a "life" to soak up the blow from the monster if he does catch you. The catch here is that there's only 5 partners, and you can't get them back if they die, or if you miss them, and each of them has their own ending. It's really interesting, although they didn't do much with it or the endings themselves to justify multiple playthroughs unless you love the game.
The soundtrack is really bad. Roughly 6 seconds of... some noise, followed by 10-14 seconds of complete silence, then the same 6 seconds again. I honestly thought something was wrong with my system at first. There are two tracks which are fantastic though.
The story is honestly great.
Without spoiling anything, it changes horror genres every chapter until the big reveal, which by itself isn't that crazy, but the execution is outstanding for such a tiny silly little game. Not on a technical level of course, the cutscenes and dialogue are pretty lame, but the concept and how it's done are surprisingly great.
This really, really surprised me. I would've never expected a game like this to be that great at it, but it goes to show you can't judge most books by their cover.
What's not great, are the actual endings. I assume this was a budget title, and they had none left by this point.
One of those is the Bad Ending, where something happens.
Two are a black screen with 3-4 lines of dialogue about... nothing.
The other three are the same footage of some grass while different voiceover plays... and they say nothing interesting either.
The only other big game this studio made was 2001's deSpiria on the Dreamcast, and then they were sent to the Atlus mines.
I wonder how much different horror games today would've been if they had been blessed with popularity back then. I feel like this style was a little too ahead of its time back then, and the technology just wasn't quite there yet.
What a shame.
You take the last train home alongside some highschool girl, but something happens and it crashes down into the sewers, where you get chased by a creature into a secret underground town built under Tokyo during Imperial times, called TOKYOMESH, because it's a mesh of tunnels put together in a maze-like structure. Your objective is to get out back to the surface, but it seems every exit you find only takes you deeper underground...
The gameplay is nothing special. First person tank controls, you gotta explore the locations while evading encounters with the monster chasing you. You're always faster than him when running, but your character gets tired fast, so you gotta plan out your dashes well. There are tons of weird NPCs you talk to for key items, or just general exposition and lore. And some which are just weirdos. They're all really cool and very "90s PS1 game"-y. I guess an easy comparison would be calling it "PS1 Amnesia".
What's really interesting is the "lives" system. You die on contact, but if you have a partner (one of the characters you meet underground) they serve as a "life" to soak up the blow from the monster if he does catch you. The catch here is that there's only 5 partners, and you can't get them back if they die, or if you miss them, and each of them has their own ending. It's really interesting, although they didn't do much with it or the endings themselves to justify multiple playthroughs unless you love the game.
The soundtrack is really bad. Roughly 6 seconds of... some noise, followed by 10-14 seconds of complete silence, then the same 6 seconds again. I honestly thought something was wrong with my system at first. There are two tracks which are fantastic though.
The story is honestly great.
Without spoiling anything, it changes horror genres every chapter until the big reveal, which by itself isn't that crazy, but the execution is outstanding for such a tiny silly little game. Not on a technical level of course, the cutscenes and dialogue are pretty lame, but the concept and how it's done are surprisingly great.
This really, really surprised me. I would've never expected a game like this to be that great at it, but it goes to show you can't judge most books by their cover.
What's not great, are the actual endings. I assume this was a budget title, and they had none left by this point.
One of those is the Bad Ending, where something happens.
Two are a black screen with 3-4 lines of dialogue about... nothing.
The other three are the same footage of some grass while different voiceover plays... and they say nothing interesting either.
The only other big game this studio made was 2001's deSpiria on the Dreamcast, and then they were sent to the Atlus mines.
I wonder how much different horror games today would've been if they had been blessed with popularity back then. I feel like this style was a little too ahead of its time back then, and the technology just wasn't quite there yet.
What a shame.