Midnight Realm

Intro

"Midnight Realm" is a puzzle game developed by Anaryu and Krisanna using Game Maker Studio that was created for a Halloween contest held by Darken back in 2009. Though getting a hold of this game is a bit of a minor annoyance now a days since like most of their projects the download links on this site are extremely dated and link to sites that no longer exist. Thankfully LatenightStudio has an itch.io page so getting a hold of this game just requires people to go off site to the following page.

Major Bug

I'll admit I'm not sure if this bug is specific to my own computer or not. This is because none of the other reviewers have mentioned this being a problem so I'm left to wonder if my old computer is a contributor to this issue, but whenever I play this game I can usually only get through a single fight before I lose the ability to right or left click in this game. And due to the nature of how combat works in this game this essentially leaves you utterly helpless during combat and assigned to death or a slow victory depending on when it happens. And the only fix I've found for this issue is to close the program and restart it. As for why this happens, I don't have the foggiest idea, but it seems to relate to how much left and right clicking you need to do during combat in this game.

Story
Summary

In this game the player takes on the role of Jeremy, a friendless young boy, who prefers to stay indoors playing video games instead of going out trick or treating on Halloween. Unfortunately for him some of his snide commentary about the nature of the holiday has drawn the ire of the Spirit of Halloween who decides to banish him to the Midnight Realm where he'll need to gather special marks in order to return to his own dimension. Of course to racket up the tension if he doesn't do this fast enough he'll be trapped in the Midnight Realm for all of eternity. To make matters worse the demons in the Midnight Realm aren't going to give up the marks without a fight so it's time to set out on a bloody adventure in order to return home and maybe learn to appreciate Halloween along the way.

Greatest Strength/Weakness

On the plus side the main character pretty quickly adapts to what happened to him and really gets into the whole epic adventure phase of things like he gets to play a video game with actual stakes. Which you'd think would freak him out a bit considering the demons make it pretty clear at points that they'll eat him if he loses. On the other hand the dialogue in this game tends to be rather weak so I found myself kind of rushing through it to a certain extent in order to get to the fights.

Gameplay

On the gameplay front "Midnight Realm" takes a page from the Puzzle Quest series. A series I've been meaning to take a look at since I do own a copy of the PS2 version of "Puzzle Quest: Challenge of the Warlords". Sadly "Midnight Realm" really doesn't sell me on the combat system. This is because the best way to beat this game is to just endlessly spam left and right clicks while also tapping the z, x, and c keys in order to spam your skills. As a result the game ends up feeling like an auto-clicker like "Cookie Clicker" than anything else. After all, the rapid spam of left and right clicks combined with skill spam is usually enough to max your attack and defense stats which turns combat into an absolute joke. At least it does for me on normal difficulty before the mouse stops working. Regardless this combat system doesn't feel strategic because the player really doesn't have to think about what they are doing in order to win.

Graphics



Visually the game is solid in my opinion with original art assets and even the way the puzzle grid works during combat is rather slick. The only notable downside in my opinion is that the game indicates which character delivered a line by also having them flap their lips endlessly. A choice that baffles me since it's not like the game's dialogue is voiced so the lip flaps are entirely pointless. It just reminds me of the lack of lip syncing in some older games like "Xenosaga Episode I: Der Wille zur Macht" and "Final Fantasy X-2", but to be fair these games weren't originally in English and addressing this issue would have been extremely expensive for something most people will only make minor jokes about before moving on.

Sound

I find myself a bit mixed about the soundtrack for this game. On the plus side the background tracks are pretty good songs that help get the blood pumping. On the other hand, they really don't fit the game in my opinion. As a result the game has a bit of tonal whiplash going for it. I really think this game needed songs more themed around the holiday especially since this is a game about making people appreciate Halloween and the many ways people celebrate it.

Conclusion

"Midnight Realm" is a subpar game in my opinion. While it does have some nice custom artwork going for it. This artwork is in service of a game whose story struggles to draw the player in and whose combat system is easily abused to the point of making combat a boring click fest that makes this game feel more like an auto-clicker than a puzzle game. While I'm sure this type of game does have fans out there that would enjoy playing the game on it's hardest setting. I imagine most people will find this game rather boring.