“Travelling At Night” Demo Review: They’ve Done It Again
Travelling At Night: demo out now, full release TBA!
tl;dr Play the free “Travelling At Night” demo, wishlist it on Steam, and follow the game on Twitch. 5/5, can’t wait for the full release but I have to.
"Travelling At Night" is the third game in Weather Factory's Secret Histories series, a franchise that started with "Cultist Simulator" and continued in "Book Of Hours." In "Travelling At Night," you play Spencer Hobson, a man with many pasts but a future that you, the player, get to control. For full disclosure, I did receive an early key for this game, before the demo came out, and I am extremely biased, as I've been a fan of Weather Factory games since Cultist Simulator's launch. I have hundreds of hours in Cultist Simulator and Book Of Hours.
Cultist Simulator was set in the 1920s, Book of Hours, the 1930s, so it's fitting that Travelling At Night is set in the 1940s. While 1940s Europe is just as war-torn in the game as it was in our world, it's war-torn for different reasons, reasons you will uncover while playing the game.
If you haven't played the other Weather Factory games before, you can still jump right into the Travelling At Night demo.I'd suggest starting with the easier Book Of Hours and then playing Cultist Simulator. This is not a game you need a Wiki to play. However, if you do play the first two games, there are various references that you'll understand are more important in the game's context, e.g. specific characters appearing or being mentioned. Playing the predecessors will also help you understand both the in-game world you're entering and the stakes associated with Spencer's actions. The game’s title is a reference to a book that appeared in the other two games as well as the Nyctodromy skill.
Unlike prior Weather Factory games, in which your character's history was left open to interpretation and there were a variety of starting characters you could play, you are going to be playing Spencer Hobson in this game. Spencer Hobson is a returning character that first made his debut in Cultist Simulator. As the trailer states, supernatural beings known as Worms "hollowed him out" and now he is on the search for a woman named Nina Lagasses (also a returning figure from both Cultist Simulator and Book of Hours.)
Rather than picking a class like Mage or Healer, you have a choice of four potential past Careers to focus on during character creation. You start in a war-torn version of the French Antibes, where instead of a landscape pockmarked by bombs and graffiti a la Disco Elysium, the world is wrong in a more supernatural way: cosmic chasms, weird weather, and supernatural content that would be end-game content for "Travelling At Night"'s peers in the CRPG genre.
If you've played Shadowrun, Disco Elysium, Planescape Torment, or other isometric CRPGs, you'll be very familiar with how this game works. Walk around the 2.5D world, interact with items and characters, pass skill checks, unlock more of the world/more items and characters/more skill checks. These types of games are a delivery mechanism for high-quality lore and dialogue, and the use of a larger 2.5D world allows Weather Factory to show us the world of the Secret Histories in a way they haven't before, in a way that involves our character actually interacting with and traversing the world, compared to the top-down card game style of Cultist Simulator and the dollhouse cross-section style of Book Of Hours.
Popups from highlighted words = footnotes.
The lure of the Secret Histories games is Alexis Kennedy's writing and Lottie Bevan's art. The writing is up to Alexis Kennedy's usual high standard and does not disappoint. Lore, as usually, is revealed in snippets. The game's Footnotes system distinguishes it from similar games in the genre: namely, highlighted words appear and, if you click them with your mouse's scroll wheel, an infobox comes up explaining the word's context within the lore...and of course, those infoboxes have more highlighted words for you to continue to click. Fans of Wikipedia clickholes rejoice.
What's black and white and red all over? My Trash Polka tattoo Pinterest board, but also, the new art style that Lottie has explored for the UI/UX. Ivory, shades of cream, grayscale, and shades of red make this game's UI/UX stand out from the darker cool-tones of Cultist Simulator and the cozy warmth of Book of Hours. I'm surprised it's relatively gentle on the eyes.
It's very rewarding, as a long-time fan, to be able to look at Lottie's art in much higher detail, given how large the item art is in the inventories. I'm a fan of her use of color, use of texture, and of course, linework.
I think it's relatively difficult, as a developer, to figure out to what extent art can be recycled without it coming off as cheap. I think the level of art reuse was very appropriate: of course, it makes sense for the in-game's Principles, for instance, to be represented using the same icons that have been used since the start of the series. The few times that I've noticed recycled assets being used, they felt like bonuses for the player (e.g. having the same cat from Book Of Hours show up in the Sanitarium, having the same ambergris and other objects show up in a display that I suspect was ocean-themed.)
The music for this game is good and distinct from Cultist Simulator and Book Of Hours. Just like the art, it fits in the world of the Secret Histories but also is distinctly more modern than its predecessors, with use of what I think are synthesizers, very fitting given the game's themes.
Is this game 100% perfect, ready for release? No. It's a very early access demo. But is it a game I'm excited about, and could see myself paying $40 for, a game I could see myself streaming and replaying? Absolutely. Many of my personal friends are excited about seeing where Travelling At Night goes and we've all loved the demo so far.
I originally wrote this review for Steam before getting hit with the “You must wait until this product has been released before writing a review for it” Then why was I shown the review box?!
