Midnight Realm Review

Halloween is always a fun day, especially is you are a wild teenager. Sure it's fun for kids to go trick-or-treating, while adults have parties (I think...), but teenagers are the reason why "trick" is in "trick-or-treat". However, for Jeremy, our protagonist in Midnight Realm, is boring. His idea of a fun time on Halloween is staying in his room, playing video games. I'm a huge gamer and will most likely spend my Halloween the same way. What makes it interesting for Jeremy, is that a spirit comes to him in hopes to change his views on Halloween. From here, the actual game begins. More often than not, you will be reading text. The only other elements of gameplay you will face is this board with tons of colors on it. From there, it becomes a clicking mayhem.

-GRAPHICS-
This was the first thing I noticed. There are not many graphics used in this game, other than the backgrounds, character drawings, and the little spheres that you click on. But what is shown of them, is beautiful. My mouth dropped when I saw how good the characters looked. I was impressed. As an artist myself, I can't imagine how much work this guy put into making the art. And since the art is about 80% of the game, I give that a 5 out of 5. The only other thing to comment on are the little spheres, which are pretty good. It's nothing groundbreaking, but it's rather well made. The game is visually gorgeous.

-SOUND-
What was heard of the sound was enjoyable. When the opening screen came up, the music playing was fitting. I really liked it. But as I played the game, I heard something. A used song. From Final Fantasy VII. It got me thinking, how much of the music was actually used? I didn't think too much on that and just went with the flow. It did eventually give the places where the music was gathered. Maybe I'll have to check it out sometime. Nevertheless, the sound effects wasn't anything too amazing. Like the hitting sounds. Sure they fit for the attacks, but like I said, it wasn't too amazing. But the sound effects get the job done, which is all I could ask for.

-GAMEPLAY-
The biggest part for any game is the gameplay. For Midnight Realm's gameplay... It was ok? I mean I wasn't bored at once while playing the game, but I knew what was coming. First we talk to some demon who is holding a mark, some even willing to give it to you without a fight, but somehow you will be forced to fight the guy. Once you enter a battle, a crap load of colorful spheres will fall onto a board. You will then need to click on certain colors to boost certain stats for your character to fight. Before you even get to this point, you get to choose what class you want to be in. That was a neat touch, with the choice of your class comes the choice of you powers. But the character does the fighting by himself, while all you're doing is keeping him well enough to fight. And you do this over and over and over again until you win the game. It gets old fast, but it's pretty entertaining.

-STORY-
As an artist, gamer developer, and a story writer, the first thing I get excited about when it comes to anything is the story behind it. Midnight Realm follows the boredom of Jeremy, who is just sitting in his room, playing games on Halloween night. When out of nowhere, the Spirit of Halloween comes up and takes you to something similar to Hell. But it's not. It a place where creatures of the night roam, where no sign of life is found for miles, not even a single human is there and when a human is spoken about, the creatures speak about his/her death... Ok, it's Hell. But your goal is to get out of there. Jeremy compares the whole thing to a video game and chooses his class. He then journeys to beat up any creature that has a mark. However, it is revealed to Jeremy that most of these creatures don't want to fight. Coming to the conclusion that they are being mind controlled, Jeremy finds the one who is behind it all. After kicking his butt, the creature tells you that it's all the Spirit of Halloweens fault. And before you can leave by using the power of the marks you collected, the Spirit of Halloween fights you. Once you win, you go home, with the moral of that Halloween can be fun, you just have to make it so. The story to me seems... predictable. It was a good story, don't get me wrong. But it doesn't seem to be that great. At least to me.

-INTERFACE-
Something I really like about this game is it's interface. Everything runs smooth for this game and works nicely. I honestly have no complaints for this game's interface.

Midnight Realm is far from perfect, obviously. But does that make it a bad game? No, not at all. Midnight Realm is a great Halloween game with plenty of good things inside of it. I had my complaints, but they were rather small. The biggest complaints I had was it's story and gameplay, but I was not at once bored with the game. I say it's worth playing. If for anything, it's art. I mean, just look at anything Anaryu, the game's developer, has in his game selection. I don't know if the art is done by him or someone he knows, but I am impressed. Perhaps I'll review another game of his in the near future, like Lux Licentia. That game looks amazing. But as for Midnight Realm, I say it's a good once in a while game to play.

GRAPHICS: 5/5
SOUND: 4/
GAMEPLAY: 3/5
STORY: 3/5
INTERFACE: 5/5
OVERALL: 3.5/5

Download: Midnight Realm