A brief and simple adventure game with a meaningful message.
Night Reverie, put simply, marks an great starting point for those unfamiliar with top-down adventure-puzzle games. For most of its approximately two-hour runtime, you’ll be moving from room to room within a medium-sized house, putting items together, and interacting with a handful of characters to move the story forward. Those with more experience in this genre will likely find its simplicity and lack of depth unsatisfying, but I found it a nice change of pace after some of the longer titles I’d been playing recently.
You play as Matt, a boy who dons a cape and pretends to be a character called the Night Explorer. Minutes after the game begins, you are transported to a seemingly alternate version of your home, which is both similar and different at the same time. In search of your sister, you encounter a small ball of flame named Sparky, and the two of you traipse about the house, solving puzzles to learn about her whereabouts. You end up encountering living, human-sized versions of stuffed animals from the real world, and much of the adventure sees Matt solving puzzles to acquire objects that these come-to-life pals are seeking.
In truth, though, Night Reverie isn’t incredibly puzzle-y; it feels more like a series of fetch quests. You need to thoroughly search each room so as to not miss an item you will need to solve a problem, fulfill a request, or open a locked door later on. At times you’ll need to combine objects from your inventory to form something new, but none of the tasks requiring combination were all that tricky. There’s a straightforwardness to the game that newcomers are likely to appreciate and that may turn off more seasoned players. There are also a few mini-games that you get to play, and these added a bit of variety to the proceedings.
Night Reverie offers a pleasant adventure game jaunt with basic mechanics and a touching ending. It’s a serving of lite fare if you’re in the mood for something that won’t overly tax your brain (but still might make you feel a wee bit clever); ultimately, though, it’s a lot of putting round pegs in round holes. While the pixel art is nice to look at, the text font is decidedly not. As a palette cleanser, it did the job for me, but I can’t say it will linger on my mind for more than a night.
