Good Night, Night – Switch – Tower

“Chapter 6 – End: Knight fell from the whirlpool. Then he died. End.” With these words your adventure begins with Good Night, Night, a Rogue-Light Dungeon Crawler-RPG from Kubik Games, which could not celebrate its final release this year after more than two years of early access to the computer, but recently Nintendo Switch. The title is available on the Nintendo EShop from April 2, 2021 for 11.99, and we look forward to letting you know if this is a useful addition to your game library.

Of course, Good Night, Night did not end in a few seconds, even though the introduction of the game suggested it. When a brilliant old man is looking for a new victim at the foot of the tower – um … I naturally go to the tower with my honorable heroes and look for the magic artifacts there, the real hero ends up during his long fall while falling from a platform. There he briefly learns the basics of the war system, and miraculously survives the impact of the facts on the hard ground, where he is immediately given the task of climbing the tower again. What a great thank you for the heroism he should have achieved now. As you may have already guessed the developers of the game do not take themselves too seriously, not only come up with fun conversations, but also pull a continuous clich of such adventures through Coco.

Chat Tower is a practically created dungeon that changes its layout – except for the tutorial section below – each time you depart and re-enter. At each site you will find randomly selected enemies, they will be difficult for you to advance in the tower, but due to their materials and resources it can be easy. In every few rooms you will find different types of equipment and curses that complicate the game in different ways (e.g. the damage to your own and enemies is increased or the doors of a room are locked after entering until all enemies are present), but at the same time increase the multiplication of experience. The tower is thematically divided into different parts, for example an irrigation cave system at the base of the tower or a heavily developed vibe, with each area including the boss opponent demanding your skills. In addition, one tower runs through the entire tower. After a certain number of platforms, you will find a switch through which you can open another station of the lift, then return to the higher levels of the tower and exit the tower quickly in between.

At the base of the tower is the base camp of the “useless knights” who stand only around the entrance to the tower, but never get the idea to go inside the tower. However, because of your tent, base camp is very important for the success of your adventure. You get different functions in your tent. You can boil utensils, put curses, decide how much food to eat before going to bed, enable two player mode and most importantly: take a nap in your bed. Good night, here I am explaining somewhat unusual equipment used by Night. Dozens of items are ready for you in the game, I really mean dozens. There are many devices that can lose track of things faster than you want. Equipment is found inside the tower and at its base, where you can exchange captured monster items for equipment. Highlight of this system: All equipment is properly weighed, so your utensil is quickly overloaded, which is why you need to remove everything that exceeds your weight limit when you die or go to bed. How to solve this problem? The experience you get in the fight against many enemies will not increase the size of your character, but will flow in your devices as you take a nap in your bed and increase its size, which will eventually reduce its weight until it weighs down. To give a new coat of paint and tools to balance the most interesting and new approach. However, if you die or do not get enough sleep to reduce the weight of your devices enough to avoid heavy loads, then you may have to give up equipment that is not available to you. Unfortunately I have not found a way to get this back in the game, which is why such a loss seems permanent.

The controls of the game are a little different from what I initially suspected. Your noble knight wants to control you with two sticks. The left analog stick is responsible for your movements, the right determines the view, and thus the direction of the knight’s attack. Attacks take place with ZR, you raise your shield with ZL. All acts of war will consume your endurance – and not in small quantities. So you can attack three to four times in a row, after which you are completely defenseless against counter-attacks because blocking with your shield is not possible without diligence. This ensures that fights are often very slow and complicated, especially at the beginning of the game, you tend to lose sight of your endurance, suffer from your opponents, and often die without the need to be carried to your bed. To make the whole thing even more difficult, it is dark in all enemy rooms so that you can only see the enemies lurking in front of you. However, this also applies to monsters, because they can only identify you in the direction you are facing. Your character and the direction of the enemy is shown by a small white arrow. An item of equipment allows you to hide in the shadows, ambush enemies and take them by surprise. Different items make fights easier, but they are used and filled only when you take a nap, which is why you should use them carefully.

The level of difficulty of the game should not be underestimated from the start, and increases with the new, more aggressive type of opponents, who need some wins before they can be defeated. It all ends in a fierce boss fight at the end of a tower division. So, it is clear that you will be playing individual passages over and over again, because not only will the enemies bring you to your knees at some point, but you will be able to move them further and further by gradually leveling your devices. As individual platforms are tossed together again and again, boredom does not arise so quickly that with each step of the tower you always have the feeling of embarking on a new, little adventure. Switching between a front attack on the enemy or ambushing from behind allows you to enjoy the rooms in different ways. However, a lot of equipment often brings only small bonuses, and farming of the products is labor intensive and time consuming.

Visually, the game is inspiring with a 16-bit look, which gives it a coherent look overall, but it’s not a special one after all the retro-look games that have made the Nintendo Ezab so insecure for years. On the other hand, the game always runs smoothly and does not crash during my test run. The soundtrack fits the atmosphere of the respective areas, even though I have to admit that there is no trace stuck in my ear for a long time. Menu navigation is sometimes not optimal for playing on a console because you often have to move the pixel-sized cursor with the left stick to select options, which of course works best with the computer mouse, but quickly annoys the Nintendo Switch.