One Night is a survival horror game focused on puzzle solving. It starts in the usual way, with a protagonist who wakes up in a strange place (this time in an abandoned lab complex) with no idea how he got there. And this time, the protagonist can't remember anything except his own name (Colt by default, but you can change it). The story is intriguing, featuring a top secret lab complex, conspiracy, rampaging monsters and beings outside this world. You get the story through documents and conversations with the few NPCs you run into. It's all written pretty well and certainly enjoyable to read.

The game has a big focus on puzzles, you find items in the environment that either let you access new area (a Rope that lets you climb down a hole leading to the basement) or allow you to progress in different way. There's also quite of lot of more traditional puzzles and passwords you will have to guess based on hints. Most of these puzzles have involve numbers and math, which gets a bit repetitive by the end, but they are pretty well made and not too difficult. There are also a few choices in the game and exploration allows you to obtain different endings.

When it comes to saving, One Night has a number of Safe Rooms all around the complex, which are the only places where you can save your game. They also contain a basin of water where you can heal your character's wounds, but the healing point in each safe room can only be used a limited number of times.

Now, there's monsters, obviously. In order to defend yourself from them, you have to find defensive items in the environment, like knives, stun guns etc. If a monster touches you and you have a defensive item in your inventory, the MC automatically uses the strongest one to attack it and prevent any damage. If you don't have any defensive items, the MC gains a wound. He can survive 2 wounds, but the third will send you to the game over screen. The defensive items vary in strenght, some simply push the monster away and prevent you from being damaged, others stun it for a few seconds and certain rare ones even outright eliminate it.

Unfortunately, since the MC automatically uses the strongest one he has, you can easily end up wasting a strong defensive item on a weak zombie, despite having about a dozen disposable weak ones in your inventory which you could've used instead. But it's not a big issue. The system works pretty well, avoiding monsters is pretty fun and that's what matter.

The monsters lose their scaryness factor quickly though and become more of an annoyance or an obstacle to get around. Their movement in particular is goofy, they all move at the exact same time, with a frequence of movement about 1 second inbetween steps, making it seem like you are playing a tiled-based roguelike where you mash the skip turn button every second.

Overall, the game isn't very scary, though it has its moments, especially at the start. The gameplay and story certainly make up for it however. It's certainly fun walking around the complex, figuring out what to do next and solving the puzzles. Now, certain parts require too much backtracking for my taste and there are a few puzzles that honestly could have been improved somewhat, but overall, it's a pretty good experience.

Despite playing the latest version, I've encountered some graphical glitches. Most of them involvred the follower NPC you eventually get, whose sprite seemed to be on a lower priority to everything else. Her head kept getting covered up by the MC's legs when you moved up, making it look really goofy. Her pathfinding was also very wonky, despite the fact that she was supposed to follow the main character, she kept walking in random directions during certain segments. This doesn't prevent you from progressing through the game in any way, it's just amusing.

One time, I told her to stay behind in one room as a story choice, yet despite the fact that she was supposed to stay in that room in-story, she still followed me, only her pathfinding AI seemed to have gone even more crazy all of a sudden, with her walking all around the place and even through buildings.

Mapping is decent and the tiles work, it uses what seem like XP style sprites with some custom modern tiles and some RTP ones mixed in. The monsters are also custom. The one letdown is the last area, which is supposed to be some scary otherworldly dimension. This area is made with what seems like standard RTP fantasy dungeon tiles, which is a bit jarring after all the previous modern areas with what seemed to be custom assets.

If I had to complain about something, it's about the boss fight mechanic, which is used a few times. You are locked inside an arena with a boss monster that chases you around and you have to wait over a minute to charge up the laser cannon, while avoiding the monster. Once the laser is all charged up, you attack the monster and the laser starts charging again for over a minute. Rinse and repeat this 3 times, then the boss is defeated. This isn't much fun. Part of the issue is the pathfinding of the monster. It's honestly trivial to get it stuck somewhere and then it's just a very long wait. And even if you play it as intended, the laser cannon charge up time is way too long. Imo it should have either been 30 seconds at most or just require one charge up of the laser cannon.

Overall, this is a nice survival horror game that deserves a rating a bit higher than what it currently has. I can most certainly recommend play this one atleast once.