The Night Is Grey is an independent PC point-and-click adventure from studio Whalestork Interactive. The game pits players against difficult puzzles in an exquisitely detailed, hand-drawn landscape filled with gloom and mystery, scored to a haunting minimal soundtrack. Whalestork Interactive has set itself a high bar, attempting to combine its haunting imagery and narrative with the challenges of the old-school point-and-click adventure games.
The story unfolds with Graham, a troubled man, guiding a young girl named Hannah through a forest that is both foreboding and dangerous. During their journey they are followed by a pack of wolves who are a constant lingering threat as Graham and Hannah venture further into the woods.
While aspects of the game’s visual aesthetics conjure up the innocence of a children’s storybook, its adult themes eventually reveal themselves in a clash that’s jarring yet intriguing. By the time the credits rolled, I was asking myself, “Was the bitter, unlikeable protagonist and oftentimes frustrating puzzles worth the payout? Or does The Night Is Gray leave its players lost to its melancholy, mourning a dawn that never comes?”
Unraveling the Night
The story in The Night Is Gray begins with an abrupt and enigmatic opening as our protagonist, Graham, stumbles out of a dark forest. The player knows nothing about Graham – where he’s come from, or how he got here – other than the fact that he’s stumbling in the dark and it seems something is chasing him. While the threat of wolves lurking in the forest is explicitly stated, there are hints of other dangers that are unseen. I was intrigued by the ambiguity: what kind of world was this, and what type of menace was waiting for me? Was this danger a concrete threat, or something supernatural?
Graham has only just emerged from the forest when he comes upon a cabin, which is where he meets Hannah, a young girl whose mother has mysteriously vanished and left her entirely alone. Graham agrees to lead Hannah through the forest to her grandparents’ home. Together, the two must navigate a series of dangerous environments to reunite Hannah with her family. The game drops hints about Graham’s past and his inner struggles. Graham and Hannah are interdependent in their survival, but the journey isn’t always easy as their relationship is at odds much of the time.
The dynamics between Graham and Hannah often felt perplexing. He had frequent outbursts and has inexplicably antagonistic behavior towards her. Their dialogue felt unnatural, as if it was an imperfect translation from another language, potentially losing some of the nuance in Graham and Hannah’s interactions. Additionally, I noticed minor typographical issues scattered throughout the game. While nothing too severe, these issues compounded the sense that the writing lacked polish, which is particularly crucial in a game without voice acting where players rely entirely on written dialogue to interpret characters’ emotions and intentions.
The pacing of dialogue and Graham’s inner monologues in The Night Is Gray further hurts the experience. Characters’ dialogue appears slowly, letter by letter, creating a sluggish feel that makes each conversation and interaction with the environment take longer than it should. This becomes particularly frustrating when accidentally repeating dialogue, or while listening to Graham’s thoughts at the same plodding pace as you click through the environment attempting to solve puzzles.
Graham’s movement through the world is equally languid. While the game offers a welcome quick-travel feature between screens via double-clicking, it’s not enough to resolve the sluggish experience of playing the game. The cumulative effect of these slow interactions—from environmental exploration to conversations with Hannah—increasingly diminished my enjoyment as the game progressed.
This sluggishness isn’t just an inconvenience, it hindered my engagement and narrative immersion. Adventure games rely heavily on exploration and dialogue, and the slow pace of these core elements hurt my experience. These pacing issues ultimately pulled me out of the game’s otherwise intriguing atmosphere.
As the story unfolds, Graham’s character becomes increasingly difficult to empathize with. His curt interactions with Hannah and hints of unresolved trauma create a palpable tension. I found myself yearning for meaningful development in Graham and Hannah’s relationship, or for Graham to engage in some introspection and personal growth. While the ending does provide context for Graham’s behavior and ties up several loose narrative threads, it didn’t quite justify the journey for me. The developers’ choice to maintain Graham’s unlikable demeanor throughout may serve a narrative purpose, but it resulted in a dissatisfying experience. The story’s resolution, though explanatory, feels insufficient to counterbalance the emotional toll of spending so much time with an unlikable protagonist.
Grey Matter Gymnastics
The core mechanic in any good point-and-click adventure game is the puzzles. I love classic point-and-click adventures, but one staple of the genre I have never enjoyed is confounding solutions to obstacles that force players to eventually seek a guide in frustration. When a stumped player must turn to a guide, the ideal reaction upon finding the answer should be, “How could I have missed that? The answer was in front of me the whole time!” and not, “WTF, that makes no sense!” Unfortunately, The Night Is Grey had too many moments where making progress in the story felt too obscure.
Progress in gameplay is further complicated by inconsistent interaction mechanics. Sometimes to progress, you need to interact with a character or piece of the environment more than once to reveal a clue or item. In some cases, the second interaction becomes fruitful later in the game, with no indication that you should return and try again. This creates a tedious cycle of backtracking and repetitive clicking.
The game’s low point arrives midway through, with a frustrating maze sequence. Armed with a lantern that dims with each new room, you have to navigate the labyrinth while locating oil barrels to replenish your light. One wrong move will plunge you into darkness and an instant death. The maze demands a specific route that I largely discovered through trial and error. This section nearly made me abandon the game altogether.
As if this challenge wasn’t enough, upon conquering the maze, players face an equally vexing challenge in the form of a quiz with lethal consequences for enough wrong answers. Three incorrect responses spell game over. Bizarrely, these questions didn’t seem to tie to anything I had learned so far, and I felt as if I had to guess blindly. This part of the game devolved into another frustrating exercise in trial and error and was not fun to play. While these challenges may have been designed to increase tension, they ultimately felt more frustrating than engaging for me.
This moment in the game really tainted my experience. It disrupted the flow of the narrative, tested my patience beyond reasonable limits, and ultimately hurt my enjoyment and immersion the game had previously established.
While not all puzzles or challenges in The Night is Grey were this frustrating, I found that the unsatisfying ones outnumbered the enjoyable ones. A feature I did appreciate that made solving certain puzzles a little easier was the ability to reveal a clue if you were stuck. The game provides three clues for the more difficult puzzles if the player gets stuck.
Crafting Melancholy
The artwork and music in The Night is Grey are truly exceptional, standing out as the game’s strongest elements and showcasing the developers’ strong artistic vision. The artwork is beautiful, instilling a sense of gloom and emptiness while still preserving a charm reminiscent of a children’s storybook. The detailed environments showcase the forest, an abandoned mine shaft, and a park ranger’s station, each imparting a palpable sense of loneliness and mystery in the first part of the game. Another very helpful mechanic allows players to reveal all objects Graham can interact with on screen, which greatly assists in exploring new areas and searching for relevant clues in the scenery to progress.
The soundtrack complements the mysterious atmosphere perfectly, striking a balance between haunting and peaceful tones. It drew me deeper into the story, casting a dreamy, almost surreal ambiance over Graham and Hannah’s adventures.
Despite my criticism of the puzzles and writing, there’s undeniable artistry poured into The Night is Grey. The combination of the visuals and audio makes exploring and progressing to new environments exciting, offering me a compelling reason to push through the more frustrating moments.
The Night is Grey presents a striking contrast between its artistic merits and gameplay shortcomings. Whalestork Interactive’s title shines with its hauntingly beautiful hand-drawn visuals and evocative soundtrack. It creates an atmosphere that blends childlike charm with mature themes. This achievement stands as the game’s strongest asset, offering a unique and captivating experience.
The game’s artistry is overshadowed by frustrating gameplay elements and narrative missteps at times. Sluggish pacing, obtuse puzzles, and a consistently unlikable protagonist hurt my engagement and immersion. While The Night is Grey demonstrates Whalestork Interactive’s capacity for creating visually striking and atmospherically rich games, it fell short in delivering a satisfying gameplay experience for me.
The result is a flawed yet beautiful journey that sadly didn’t resonate with me. As a huge fan of independent games, I encourage anyone interested to check it out and form their own opinion. While The Night is Grey may not be for everyone, it does offer a haunting, unforgettable experience, and I commend the developers for their ambitious work on the game. Despite its shortcomings, The Night is Grey shows great promise, and I look forward to seeing how Whalestork Interactive builds on this experience in future projects.
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