Near Midnight

I have 3rd fastest time on speedrun.com - fucking hackers

I speedrun this game and when I complete to run it again I can't use my cursor after the game ends can you guys help me??????

Played the game for a bit and speedrunned it was pretty fun, played it casually at first and got scared once but its pretty fun to get a gun that can't do anything.

Developers in 2016: "We're constantly adding content to the game to make it longer"

2 years later the game is still the exact same length and ends extremely abruptly after 2-3 minutes of gameplay.

The funnest part of the game for me was getting out of bounds, which says a lot about the story/gameplay.

walter

I actually like the creepy mansion atmosphere. But this game is very short and the player get easily stuck at walls while walk around.

This is most likely the worst thing I've played on Steam so far. I mean that seriously. :(

For only $1 I liked it. Yeah, it's short. 5 minutes. But it's got a creepy feel to it. They have much work left to be done. But so far it's not bad.

This game was meant to be scary but instead was kinda funny.

It starts out with an image of a tiny(500 sq. ft.) farm house and an intro of news clippings(diary entries?). After you read them all, they start over and keep looping until you click skip.

Once inside, the tiny farm house has suddenly become a 5000 square ft mansion! I wish my apartment could do that, but I digress.

The textures are a bit mish-mashed so that you can see blue lines where they don't quite match eachother. Disappointing to say the least.

Basically all you do is walk around and trigger events til it boots you to the menu with no way to quit aside from killing the program via ctrl+alt+del or just right-clicking the window on my taskbar and selecting close.

It was all over so quickly(less than 5 minutes) that I must suggest that this game should really be free.

Here as a summary of the plot: You are some random detictive/policeman/investegator man and you are tasked with finding a deed lassies body, you start in a massive house with no front door, just staring at a random shelf. Afterwards you run around the house looking like a huge mongo and being definitely scared by some ghost lassie. Then you go into a room of which you get trapped inside and have to go through the dam near impossible task of crouching and walking through a tiny hole!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (used exlamation marks to emphasize how scary and solid it was) Then when you escape the hopeless trap you then run down a hallway while the great voice actor licks his lips and then makes some weird gurgling noise. To round off an already brilliant game you then run down the other way of the hallway and see some lassie for 0.5 seconds and then the game ends and crashes.

Stuart Auld (when describing the game) - "Juicy juice" and "Why no say I mean no?"

Fraser Yuill (when describing the game) - "This is completely pointless" and "I mean no"

Overall score out of 5 billion...... 10 trillion

Here is few wee easter eggs for you:

1. If you click the middle mouse button you get some shite 3rd person but no 3rd person camera angle that makes the game 10 times harder to play. I mean funner

2. When you first load the game it asks you what graphics quality you would like, this is actually a huge prank by the developers as all graphics options are literally the exact same except for that if you put the graphics too the lowest quality it makes the game crash... jokes on us.

3.The very famous mirror that is ment to reflect your darkest fears from the game is actually just a sheet of metal that reflects random bits of dirt and has nothing to do with the background. :O ...

I mean no

4. If you stare at the ghost lassie at one point you can see her do random squats or yoga positions... HOW MINTED IS THAT!

5. This game is complete shite, diny buy it

6. I mean no

I can't tell you the date that Near Midnight originally launched, the store page says December 15, 2016; so it must be a game from the future [review originally posted in October 2016]. From the news section of the forums, it released sometime around September 5, 2016. Many people complained about the inital price tag due to the short 8-10 minute length of the game, and the developer decided to drop the title down to $1.09 CAD. BUYER BEWARE... we may have a scam developer on our hands.

Yes folks, this is a whistle-blowing review for many reasons. This game features the exact house and map layout from an older game on Steam called The Archetype, with a very minor exception being that some ground items are different. Further research reveals that it's from a $45 paid-for Unity asset pack, which the developer hasn't altered in any manner. Yes, we're dealing with an Asset Flipper. You roam the few hallways and rooms of the house, chasing a couple stagnant figures, reading a couple notes that you can't pick up, and once you get to the end of a certain hallway the game boots you back to the title screen.

If asset flipping wasn't enough, the store page is hugely misleading. The game is actually much brighter (probably about 50%) than what is shown on the store page screenshots and trailer. You don't even need a flashlight to navigate the through the unaltered, pre-rendered mansion. To make matters worse, the controls are just abhorrent and they're never explained in-game. My best guess is that the developer didn't give two fks enough to change the controls from standard Unity development controls to personalized game controls. For some reason you can use your scroll wheel to zoom in and out, but it completely screws up being able to navigate as no matter what you do, you can't get it in the same position as before. When you look around after doing this, it's like a camera is swinging around, not a character model moving around. One key slows down time, one key speeds it up, one key finally puts you back to normal game speed. I found all this out after trying desparately to pick up a flashlight and gun, only to find out that to pick things up requires the press of the F key; no not E like all other normal titles.

So let's see. Developer buys asset pack for $45 and doesn't alter it in any way. Puts up doctored trailer and screenshots to make game feel darker and spookier than what it really is. then blames customer base for their "delusion" around the game. Initially charges $4 CAD for a game that lasts 10 minutes at best. Promises updates with more content and doesn't deliver. Basically uses Unity development camera control buttons for in-game control scheme. I cannot prove that this is a scam developer at this point, but this game is one to not invest in. Do not support misleading games and asset flipping developers.

Rating: 0.5/5.0 - Abysmal, avoid it like the plague.

Making the excuse that a game is allowed to have devastating shortcomings "because it's in Early Access" is surely no better exposed as the nonsense it really is by looking at crap like Near Midnight.

Here's how I like to look at it: imagine you're a surgeon in a hospital and two guys come in. The first has a deep cut on his leg. It looks kind of vicious but there doesn't appear to be an infection. You can say with some degree of certainty that he will recover and enjoy the use of that leg for the remainder of his days.
The second guy brings you his leg in a bag. It is in two pieces, one of which a dog has partially eaten while the other half is not part of a leg at all. It is a desk lamp. The stump that used to hold his leg onto his body has turned black and become home to a cluster of flesh eating hornets. The man cheerfully asks you to fix his leg.

Some Early Access games are not going to get better and it's usually painfully obvious which ones they are. I'm not saying the developer intended for this to be a cash-grab, even though every component of it stinks like one with its five minute playtime and assets unimaginatively dumped all over the bloody place like the only effort that went into Near Midnight was renaming it from the original Spooky Mansion Template. I'm just saying that when you allow stuff like this to exist under the guise of a development build, you help nobody.

Playthrough below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNGJKgHgNyo

https://gaming.youtube.com/watch?v=sUSLW3tANrk&feature=share

A family is found murdered, but the daughter has gone missing. For whatever reason, you are playing as a tour guide of Monty Python's Museum of Silly Walks now in the same building from the Unity asset pack 'Last Will' utilized investigate the weird "noices" inside. What you find is a brief three to five minute exploration title with a terrible clip-art apparition and comedic scares that is better left a free to play tech demo that still wouldn't be worth your time.

Side note, the images and trailer footage at the top of the page doesn't actually represent what you get with this game. The actual gameplay is much brighter to the point that you don't need the flashlight at all, and what eerie tension is showcased doesn't exist at all. Please feel free to check out my let's play video above to compare.

If I'd paid the original $3.99 for the game, I might have been disappointed at the length. However, for $0.99, it's not terrible (and even better, I only paid $0.89 on sale). It's obviously early access, and I'm not sure why it's not tagged as such on Steam, but it definitely has potential. There are some visual glitches that are normal for an in-development game and will likely disappear as more work is done. Spelling errors are present as well, but there aren't too many. Nothing is game breaking, though one priority might be adding a way to exit the game without having to open task manager to do so.

Overall the look and tone of the game is pretty good, if the story were "fleshed out" a bit it seems to have some potential, and the gameplay is pretty smooth with the exception of some hang-up in doorways and such (also typical in early development).

It definitely doesn't deserve the "mostly negative" review at this price, though it's understandable as most of the reviews were posted prior to the price cut.

This game was released on December 15th 2016, but it's such a horrible game it sent shockwaves backwards through time

-1/10 wouldn't play again to fix the timespace continuum

Keep in mind, this review takes into consideration the following: An understanding of the game's state and length as provided above for all to see http://steamcommunity.com/games/522590/announcements/detail/968660273412600348 ; the fact that the release date states December 15, 2016, again for all to see; and the fact that I paid only $.89 for the thing.


First off Near Midnight is more a demo than a full game. Something I don't mind paying $.89 for. As I understand it used to be $3. Something I may not have paid at the time for this. The game has promise, however. That is provided the developer contnues to actually work on it. That stated, I'm not entirely confident this will be in proper early access by December. We shall see though. Now, I'll list the pros and cons and then explain my review status afterwards.

Pros:

Great backstory

Good setting

Decent atmosphere

Partial controller support (quite a pleasant surprise for me)

Cons:

Looping intro sequence

Texture ripping

Poor lighting

Annoying sfx

Noninteractable items, save for one solitary pistol


Summary:

Yes, I'm giving Near Midnight a recommend and a positive review. Why? Simply put, because it has promise if it is worked on.

I did not include the length in the pros/cons because that information was privy to anyone willing to spend more than a second looking at the store page. There is a dev announcement for September 5, 2016 that states they know the game is short and not fully developed. A warning that is ready for the masses right there on the store page. So I will NOT be holding that against the game because I was warned about it before purchasing. I full well knew I would have between 1-10 minutes with this.

I did appreciate what Near Midnight is trying to accomplish here. This game does have promise provided we see these guys continue to develop it and are not trying to nickel and dime us here. And I, personally, felt $.89 wasn't such a bad development "donation" for continued development. I spend more on a candy bar that is quickly digested. I'm not upset about the purchase. I like the backstory. I enjoy the fact that it takes place on a rural farm and that the daughter is seemingly possessed by a spirit or demon. At least, that is the assumpting I made based on the background text. I absolutely love that there is at least a rudimentary native support for controllers already. My Xbox One controller easy accomplished all thing I required for interacting in the game world. It was a very pleasant surprise and I appreciate that it was included. I also like the house itself. There were a few logical fallacies I found with it, but I'll go into detail about that below. The house is a great setting for the game. I just hope there are more rooms in the future or a spooky mechanic that extends the play area later on. The girl is downright creepy and I appreciate that. The actress has done a great job conveying this girl. I like that there is no HUD or UI. It added to the horror factor by not showing us how many bullets were in the gun. Keep the lack of UI present.


Well that was the positive paragraph. On to the gritty stuff. DEVELOPER, consider this a personal note to you as well.

Right off the bat I noticed something negative. The fact that the intro sequence continually loops itself until you click on "Skip." That needs to be taken out as soon as possible. The intro needs to be voiced over and once played, go directly to gameplay. None of this looping nonsense. As soon as I entered the house I looked to my right and noticed a texture tear between the first and second floors. I could see the light blue of the sky between the two. Throughout play I also spotted quite a few of these texture tears running vertically on a number of the walls. The second thing I noticed about the textures is that the house is way too destitute for what the backstory provides. From my understand we are arriving to inspect noises after a recent double homicide. There is no reason why the house interior should look like it has been left to fall apart for over 20 years in the wilds. I imagine these attentive and caring parents also upkept the house fairly well. Something the dev might want to consider. I get going for atmosphere, but at the cost of immersion is always a bad decision. Some of the sfx are a little....much. The awful bong sound that exists with every spooky change just kills the immersion for me. Just use the laughter or weird sounds that accompany the bong sometimes. Some sfx that is relevant to the room or house at some level. Cut that bonging sound out of the game. It is horrible. Absolutely horrible. There is a point where we hear dripping after coming across a note about a bathroom. It makes no sense. There is no tub anywhere or a bathroom that I found. So that was just poorly done. Expand the house to accompany what you're going for here. The lighting needs to be fixed. As another reviewer stated, it looks nothing like the video on the store page. If the lighting were like that and we had a flashlight, this demo experience would have been a lot better. The abrupt ending would have been a bit more intense if we had a flash of something hitting us or the girl rushing towards us and blacking the screen out. The sudden cutoff and return to the menu screen is disappointing. More so considering we can't restart or close the game because the mouse cursor fails at that point.

Overall, the game has promise but is full of flaws. Keep on developing and see this vision come to light.


TL;DR

PROS

Great backstory
Good atmosphere
Partial controller support

CONS

Looping intro sequence
Texture ripping
Some bad sfx and lighting
Unsatisfying abrupt ending

Considering the pros/cons, I still recommend the game. For $.99 it is worth investing in for the continued development of the title. Something that could genuinely become great as long as the developer continues developing. I'd much rather promote support of a project that could be good than to squelch creativity entirely and shut down an endeavor. Call me an optimist, I suppose.

3€ for 3minutes of non-creative, not-imersive running through a house to find the same annoying mechanics over and over again. No sense, no story, just useless. 3Dollars for a bunch of nothing is total scam. Reported

Waste of 3 dollars.

Whoever is recommending this game is probably being payed by the developer.

Stay away, save yourself

...it's 3 minutes long.
It just boots you back to the menu without the mouse cursor so you have to force quit, I got the sound like the jumpscare was yelling at me again but it was so fast that I'm not even sure it was an ending.

The lighting was also way too high, if the environments were like the screenshots then it would have been alright, but there is nothing to set the mood in this super short premise of a game.
This is too early for Early Access.

To the extent that I got any feeling of where this game might be going, it is hopefully going to become Seven; which also uses the 'Unity Mansion' assets. Seven isn't on Steam but it is worth tracking down, this though...needs more content quickly.

Nice joke, now go and create something better than this.

10 minutes game length and they buy good reviews.

> Report this Product > Fraud