UFO 50 Retrospective Part 42 - Night Manor

While UFO Soft has toyed with scary, isolating, spooky, and macabre conecpts before, with games like in Divers, or Fist Hell, or hell even Waldorf’s Journey, this game goes far, far beyond that. The only game with a WARNING, this is a straight up horror game. And it makes sense. It’s the first, and only game (unless you count UFO 50 itself) that was lead by longtime developer Greg-Milk. Milk, despite being a massive scaredy cat, is very into horror, and wanted to share his love with a video game. How did he do?

You play as an unnamed woman driving home from a party. The party is said to be thrown by “Amy”, so we can consider this yet another game in the Partyverse! That ends up having some dark connotations for what’s happening just outside town, but then again this town DID have a zombie uprising, so it’s kind of in character. On your drive home, you crash your car into a figure in the road, and blackout. You wake up an unknown time later in a dilapidated house, in what looks like a cell of some kind. This is where your game begins.

Night Manor is a very loving tribute to the Macventure games, three extremely influential and beloved point and click adventure games of the 80s. You’ve PROBABLY heard of Shadowgate, but there’s also Uninvited and Deja Vu. This is very Uninvited energy, personally, but also has a lot of Clocktower and contemporary horror energy. You have to solve puzzles, collect items, and explore this horrorfying house. As you explore, you are also being hunted by the Monster, a scary man in some kind of mask with a knife who chases you if you make too much noise. So like, don’t flush the toilet over and over, he hates that.

I really like point and click adventure games, and this is a good one! But I have a few complaints. Some of the puzzles and items are a LITTLE obscure, not nearly as bad as 80s games could get, but y’know, a little obscure. And there’s the problem of the horror guy. The first time he shows up, it’s genuinely effective. There’s a loud noise, a scary monster, a knife, and your cursor is suddenly shaking and hard to control. You need to try and run for it, while struggling to control your own panic, and it’s a great and fun idea! And you dive into hiding spots throughout the house, and have to do a quick time event mini game to hold your breath as he hunts for you. It’s hard, but rewarding once you survive. And as you explore, these hiding spots get destroyed, and become less numerous, so it becomes more harrowing the further in you get. This all SOUNDS good, and it is good! The first few times! But you HAVE to make noise to proceed, and every time you do, he shows up, and you gotta run away from the puzzle you’re solving to hide in a bush, and do a mini game, and if you fail the mini game, he’ll just kill you and then you wake up in your cell, with all your items, and nothing has changed. There’s NO penalty for dying, at all. Which is good, cause it’s easy to die. But then why even have this mechanic? It’s not BAD, it really just destroys the pacing.

Milkdud clearly loves his horror. The game has a warning, and it means it. There’s some fucked up imagery and concepts in here. My favorite is the screaming corpse you find in the bathtub. This place is NOT a happy place. Lots of people died here, including dogs and children, so uh, warning. Anyways, Night Manor is a really solid point and click adventure game with great atmosphere, great graphics and style, and fun puzzles that can keep you scratching your head for a while. One of the best games in the collection for sure.

9/10