Steam Early Access Preview: Between Me and the Night

Between Me and the Night, a quirky little adventure game from RainDance LX has made its way to Steam Early Access recently for the price of £14.99 – still in development, obviously, but using the Early Access format to gauge feedback and make necessary improvements.

The game centres on a young boy in his home and, simply put, has you exploring the place witnessing and engaging with the weird things that are going on there. The developers state that the game “walks a thin path between sanity and madness” which seems to be represented effectively in its gameplay and setting as the demo sees you seemingly awake from a strange dream (the tutorial), but the unusual nature of your imaginings is still present. It is by all intents and purposes a waking dream (or nightmare, depending on how you look at it).

The demo doesn’t last very long (no more than 40 mins approximately), but during this we get to experience a couple of the game’s challenges and get a general feel of how everything works. It’s 2D styling’s mean you view your environments side-on, moving your character from left to right and using the up and down keys to use stairs. The depth of field is a little subtle, meaning you need to pay close attention to your backgrounds, but doors and interact-able items aren’t too difficult to distinguish.

Controls are simplistic, as you might imagine, but climbing on objects and going up and down stairs can feel a bit awkward. The viewpoint doesn’t help, but I can think of other titles with a similar presentation that managed their controls better (Whispering Willows, for example). As you are exploring the house you are able to interact with various objects and items that you find. You have a limited inventory space for you to store things you deem important, which could be anything from books to game controllers to little figurines – of course, most of these don’t appear to have any use whatsoever, but it is nice that you can carry them around with you and place them where you like. This comes in handy with the puzzles that the game offers, which are quirky to say the least. Without spoiling too much, as I feel much of the game’s charm lies in these weird designs, you may be faced with, say, a giant cat that swipes at you as you try to get past….maybe you find some cat food in the kitchen to quell its viciousness.

Unfortunately, again the controls let this area down. The system by which you pick up and use items is a little convoluted and clunky – the latter of which I imagine has more to do with the Early Access state than anything else, but it’s still worth pointing out. When you want to pick something up you must click the left mouse button (assuming you’re using a mouse and keyboard – the game also supports a controller) which zooms in slightly, giving you the ability to select objects within your reach. When you click on an item it gives you the option to examine, which produces a line from our character, or to take the item. Then when you’re finished you right click to go back to normal view. It doesn’t sound like much of a hassle when it’s described (lazy gamer problems?), but in effect it seems to take a while longer than it probably should, especially when you’re required to be virtually on top of items before they come in reach – I found myself stuck five minutes into the tutorial because I couldn’t pick up a key; I thought the game had bugged out, but apparently I just wasn’t in the exact place that I needed to be. I think with a little bit of tweaking the majority of the frustration here will be removed.

Item based puzzles aren’t all the game has to offer, though. And playing in line with its reality/insanity concept there is another world to inhabit. More specifically a videogame world (meta, right?). A certain room in the house draws you towards an arcade machine sitting in the corner, and upon closer inspection it sucks you into its world. Here you take the form of a warrior on what appears to be a snowy mountain, as you hack your way through monsters to reach a tower. You are equipped with a sword and a shield which you utilise using the left and right mouse buttons, and can lock-on to enemies with the space bar. Combat is very simplistic, and enemies don’t provide a lot of feedback to your attacks, making it a bit unsatisfying, but the whole concept is an interesting change from the fairly laid back exploring you do in the house. And that’s pretty much all there was to it. It was a very short demo. It’s clear that there is still a bit of polishing to do in its early access state – there have been some reported bugs (though I didn’t personally experience any), and sound effects seem to be lacking as you explore the house.

Aesthetically the game is looking brilliant – colourful, quirky and animated – and the story certainly intrigues me. It doesn’t give much away, but certain parts gave the impression that we could be in for a poignant backstory, and I really look forward to finding out what is going on with this boy and his house. However, alarms bells do ring with regards to the simplicity of the gameplay. The combat wasn’t satisfying or particularly fun, and the puzzles were incredibly easy – the exploration isn’t interesting enough to make up for this, so unless the rest of the game provides something more substantial then it could fall short.

Additionally, as I have already mentioned, the Early Access is a very short demo, and it isn’t cheap. I’m not going to recommend purchase for an Early Access title – they make sense for those who are seriously invested in a game and want to provide feedback or follow closely the development, but otherwise you really are just paying for something that isn’t finished – but I will say that nearly £15 seems a little steep for what’s on offer (personally if I had paid for this, I may be feeling a little apprehensive about my investment). The game should only be in the Early Access stage for a couple of months, so if you do decide to give it a shot then make sure to give the devs your feedback, and hopefully come its release they will have it polished to its best.