The author of this article: Nuclear friend
preface
I think everyone should have had the experience of reading fairy tale text books or comic books by the bedside from childhood to adulthood, or the bizarre little stories that my grandmother told us on a summer night while fanning the wind with a fan before we fell asleep, and various types of fairy tales accompanied almost everyone's childhood.
Among them, there is a kind of fairy tale called dark fairy tale, generally fairy tales have a perfect happy ending, which is to give children hope, and dark fairy tales often do not end well, some will even be a little cruel, but they often tell the dark side of real life, cruel side, some people say that dark fairy tales are adults to their own world ridicule or parody, this kind of work is indeed not suitable for young children to accept, but for teenagers and adults, it has its own unique thinking value, The game "Long Dreams in the Dark Night" introduced to you today is a dark fairy tale style as a narrative template, telling the story of the childhood trauma of an ordinary boy in life, this boy may be you, it may be me, it may be anyone you see on the street.
Experience the world of dreams in the dark depths and chases
When I first came into contact with this game, I immediately thought of "Little Nightmare", the game's graphic style is somewhat similar to it, and the story told is also mapping reality, the game's graphics are mostly presented with a dark cold tone, and then supplemented by relatively few warm color points. This emphasizes a sense of gap between darkness and light, such as the "dream elf" Bikti who always follows the protagonist, this chiaroscuro makes the butterfly-like "dream elf" of the protagonist's little boy particularly bright, this unique art style, forming a dark fairytale-like experience, the "dream elf" that always follows the protagonist is the only light of the protagonist in the endless abyss, so that the special atmosphere of depression and accompanied by a certain sense of security is extremely well shaped.
(The protagonist with his only companion "Dream Elf")
It is also worth adding that the game has the element of horror positioning, the atmosphere of the game is very good, even if the game does not use the strongest sense of immersion first-person, but uses a god perspective, but this does not affect the game author's genius play, sometimes weird and scary blue, in the vicinity of the monster, the game screen will also appear like water ripples, and even warm color transitions and gradients when switching between different scenes are handled very well. At the same time, the game uses a weird and low BGM, which mobilizes the player's tension throughout the process. The makers of the game chase also specially designed the operation that requires the player to run and open the mechanism, which is very tense of the old version of Resident Evil, and the game with an animated style picture and is operated from the perspective of God can portray the unknown fear to the fullest, which is really unexpected to me.
(The game graphics, especially the color tone shift, are handled very well)
Explore shattered dreams
The main gameplay of the game is decryption and exploration collection, the decryption system is even integrated into stealth dodging and part of the chase battle, which greatly increases the difficulty of the game, the overall difficulty of the game is very high, and as the flow of each chapter, the difficulty will continue to increase, may be the producer intends to serve the needs of the plot, but correspondingly raise the threshold of the game, the operation becomes difficult, a large number of failures in the same scene can easily affect the enthusiasm of such games.
The level design of the game is undoubtedly a lot of effort, whether it is benchmarking the domestic independent game field or benchmarking the world's independent game production level, it can be said to be superior, although the essence is to decrypt this gameplay, but the production team is indeed to expand the content of this decryption to the unimaginable, the innovative decryption in the game includes but is not limited to a variety of different riddle interactive items, pushing boxes to change the map layout, dodging deadly mechanisms, looking for monster movement laws when stealthing, etc. I was particularly impressed by the whole game, where I thought I needed to find the right door, but the makers innovatively designed to rotate the wall in the right direction to get an exit.
(Rotating wall decryption, very innovative and interesting)
There are a large number of collectibles hidden in all corners of the game, and in this game, collectibles are not only the choice of the full player, but also become an important tool for understanding the story and necessary to achieve the real ending. The complete story of the game basically requires these collections to be triggered, and the game also has designed a "dream hall" specifically for the collections, where players can trigger new content after collecting all parts of a certain type of item.
(The game collection system is relatively large)
The exploration process of the entire game requires frequent use of the "dream elf" function, looking for monster movement rules, viewing mechanisms and available collectibles can be observed with dream elves, and when the player gets lost, the detection function can also provide the player with the correct direction through the way of footprint indication. Some items in the scene can be upgraded to improve the function and utility of the "Dream Elf", and the "Dream Elf" is not infinitely available, and it needs to be replenished after the energy is exhausted, otherwise it cannot be further detected. The game also has a stamina setting, and you can collect an item called "Elk Soul" to increase your health limit.
(The game also has a stamina setting, and you can also collect items to upgrade)
Face childhood trauma and complete self-redemption
Some people say that the theme of domestic thriller games often can't run out of depression, childhood trauma, school bullying and other content, there has been aesthetic fatigue, but the author here believes that art comes from life, is the exaggeration of life, precisely because our current society such problems can no longer be common, there will be so many works with similar plots, after all, such works will always have an audience, but the game that can make these their own thinking, and provide players with thinking, can be a good game, "Dark Night Long Dream" It's such a good game.
Considering that some readers may not have played this game yet but have the desire to play, in terms of the details of the plot, I will not analyze this large-scale spoiler in this review, because the plot of this game still has to explore the collection by yourself, find the connection between dreams and reality, and slowly feel those wordless pictures to experience the best.
(There are many points of connection between this dream and reality in the game, which is the key to understanding the plot in the game)
I will only briefly mention the main thrust of the plot of the game, the game tells the story of a little boy who is deeply traumatized by childhood in a dream, looking for clues about reality in the dream, overcoming fear, and completing the story of self-redemption, the game is divided into six chapters, except for the sixth chapter The theme is redemption, the rest of each chapter represents a type of traumatic event, which covers all the trauma that a tragic child may experience, although there are very few people who really experience all of this in reality. But often we experience one or both of them, which is why I wrote at the beginning of the article: "This boy could be you, it could be me, it could be anyone you see on the street." ”
Although the story in the game is a coherent story of a boy, we can change the angle when we understand it. Each chapter refers to a broad category of events. First of all, the first chapter refers to children who experience conflicts in their original families, and often the conflicts between parents will be inadvertently vented on children. Chapter 2 refers to children who have been subjected to violence in schools, and children who have been bullied by their classmates are often ignored by their teachers. Chapter 3 refers to the phenomenon that it is difficult for the stepfather or stepmother to get along with the non-biological child after the divorce of the original parents, and in most cases, the original child will often be bullied by the stepmother and the stepfather. Chapter 4 refers to children who suffer from negative social evaluations, often sometimes we feel that nothing is being done, but those who have nothing to do with you always have cold and hostility towards you, even strange prejudices. Chapter V refers to children who have lost a close person, such as a bereaved father, a mother, or other family members who were previously very close to the child. In the game, the makers use dreams to transform trauma into a huge monster, showing how much these injuries affect children's psychology.
(Children who have experienced this, their dreams have not been shattered)
The game is divided into multiple endings according to the player's collection, and the true ending obtained by collecting all the key props is a redemption ending, in fact, the game is idealized after all, and often children who suffer seriously from these pains in reality may not have salvation for a lifetime.
(The protagonist in the game is lucky in some ways, and his biological parents still silently care for him)
Professional plot additions
Finally, it is worth mentioning that the game maker must have put some effort into the field of developmental psychology and physiological psychology in order to make this game, there are many rigorous terms in the game protagonist physiological EEG test report, and there are many psychological counseling consultation reports, many players have mentioned this long list of content completely incomprehensible, indeed the maker can make these processing more popular, that the effect may be higher, but these text content at least prove that the production team has worked the plot.
(These text contents prove that the production team has put a lot of effort into dealing with the plot and psychological content)
What impressed me the most was that there are several paragraphs in the game that tell why the protagonist operated by the player wanders in this dream world, and the author uses the theories of psychoanalysis and some principles of cognitive neuroscience to supplement the worldview, interested players can study it.
epilogue
The overall quality of this game, in all domestic independent games, can be regarded as a superior work, the gameplay is very novel, many innovations are just right, the fly in the ointment is a little more difficult.
The plot is also very meaningful, especially for those players who have similar experiences, when we adults look at children from an adult perspective, we often feel that some of the things experienced by children are nothing at all, and even many parents always feel that their children are pretentious, but they themselves are also like this, but after that age can not experience that kind of feelings, although there are many difficulties in reality, it is impossible for everyone to have a happy childhood, And what has happened cannot be changed, but we can still complete the redemption of the protagonist in later life, and not let the same tragedy be repeated in the next generation.
Finally, the author ends with a sentence from Adler's "Inferiority and Transcendence", which has been changed by a lot of chicken soup and emo copywriting, and it should actually be like this: "Happy people are healed by childhood all their lives, and unhappy people also have a lifetime to heal childhood." "I wish all friends who have had traumatic experiences can come out of the haze!