NightSky Review: Of Rolling, Rolling, Rolling

In what seems like Nicalis month, with the release of Cave Story at the beginning of the month, Nicalis spices things up by releasing their hit puzzle game NightSky for the Nintendo 3DS eShop. NightSky is a physic puzzle game involving moving a marble ball around a stage using the environment and gravity to complete each stage.

As mentioned, NightSky is a physics puzzle game. Each level is short with only two to three sections worth of challenges. There are several unique challenges per level that will require you to use different abilities or devices in certain ways in order to move on. For example, some levels require you to be on top of a large rock and roll it across the stage without falling off. Other levels have unique vehicles that include ones that can fly. While other levels will give you access to some abilities such as the ability to reverse gravity while others will restrict what you can do. There are a few levels that will only give you the ability to reverse gravity and have to use gravity itself to move and nothing else.

Once you finished the main game, there is always more to do. Throughout the game, you will find 12 different secret stars. These are hidden in different levels in hard to reach locations. Because the levels are short and the ones with a star are marked, it shouldn’t be too hard to figure out where some of them are. Once you have all 12 stars, you can reach the final levels of the game for some extra challenges. If this is not enough, there is always alternative difficulty mode to take things up a notch. This really makes things more difficult by changing some of the levels and introducing brand new ones. Some of these levels are actually quite easy, but made to look very hard and trick you into failing. So be sure to re-think how you might complete a level.

NightSky has visuals similar to that of Limbo, with all the foreground colors being black and everything in the background white or some shade of color to look like the sky. This simplistic look works well for NightSky and helps set the mood with its background music even more. The music gives off a zen-like atmosphere that does well to fit with the game. It should be noted that the music in the game is slightly soft and faint. I recommend playing this in a quite area or with headphones, else you will be most likely unable to hear the music.

If you like physic puzzle games, you will love NightSky on the Nintendo 3DS eShop. Each level is slightly different and offers different challenges and conditions to keep things addictive and fun. Even after you fully complete the normal difficulty mode, there is still the 12 secret stars and alternative difficulty mode to spice things up. This game should last you a good 8 hours depending on how good you are at the challenges.

Rating: 8.5/10

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