Noct is one of the few indie games that has really captured my attention. After a short time with it, I’ve been pretty impressed. Noct has so many unique features and clever design decisions and if everything that developer C3SK plans on implementing can be achieved, this will be one of the greats.
Noct
Developer: C3SK
Price: $8.99 (10% off in Early Access)
Platform: PC
MonsterVine was supplied with a PC code for preview.
Noct makes the top-down perspective fun again. The camera angle and controls feel right at home, but instead of inexplicably having a god-like sense of vision, you play the role of an XMIT transmitter looking down upon a RCV (receiving) survivor either from some aerial drone or plane. The view automatically creates a dreary atmosphere as you look through your CRT-Style screen at what feels like an AC-130 view from Call of Duty. Everything is either incredibly dark or blindingly bright depending on which view mode you select and the only thing that truly stands out those are alive. The rest of the UI is simple and abbreviated to make for a military analyst feel. You’ve got your weapon and ammo information in a purposefully generalized fashion, which really instills the fact that you are not truly on the ground. You’ve also got food, water and health, although the only resource of these three that I’ve found to matter is water as it is required to be able to sprint.
Each and every time you log in is a bit different, but the XMIT/RCV relationship and story remain the same. When you first spawn in things can be confusing. The XMIT transmitter usually explains to the survivor that he’s been granted weapons, and that XMIT needs the survivor’s help to save everybody. In Early Access the story is fairly quick, only taking me about an hour (others report as short as 30-40 minutes) to reach the game’s softcap ending in which there is simply no more objective other than “Gather Supplies.” Without spoiling the in-between objectives, I truly felt important and the relationship between XMIT and the survivor felt authentic and emotional, in a text-based sort of way.
Throughout your short trek in the game you will die, a lot. The reason Noct is considered a “Horror” title is exclusively due to the monsters, their sudden entry and the survivor’s frailty. Each monster is grotesque, and even though we don’t see much more than outlines they’re truly unsettling. This, matched with their often jump-scare entries and a sudden “Uh-Oh” comment from survivors is enough to frighten just about anybody, at least a little bit. Fortunately, Noct handles death in an incredibly organic way. Each and every time you die you can “Locate Another Survivor,” in which you will suddenly contact a new survivor. But instead of starting the whole thing over again, XMIT simply tells the survivor to pick up the last survivor’s loot and then you continue from wherever you were in the story. Usually there’s a short conversation about how the last survivor “didn’t make it” and a comment on the morality of looting, which is a great touch. This made the world feel lived in to me, and like there was a small amount of survivors scattered around.
There’s a multiplayer component to the game, with an extremely basic local chat system, although this system hasn’t been fully functioning for me. Often times player movements wouldn’t update, and monsters would stutter around in a way that made them more terrifying than ever intended. As this is an early beta it is to be expected, but I can’t legitimately gauge the online component of this title without reliably testing it. However, I will say that I am excited to try this title online, and I can imagine that the tension of DayZ-like player interactions on top of an already incredibly difficult world excites me.
There’s one last thing that this indie developer blew out of the water, and that is the sound. Somehow, this independent developer has managed to nab Nine Inch Nail’s Robin Finck for most of the soundtrack, alongside composer Wordclock. The result is a properly creepy, immensely professional soundtrack that changes dynamically throughout your game time.
Ultimately I’m very impressed by Noct. It manages to bring together horror and top-down shooters, a combination that I never imagined would be good, and manages to knock it out of the park. A Triple-A status soundtrack, unique and logical UI elements and an interactive story make this game great as it is, albeit short. But looking into its future, where hopefully multiplayer gets ironed out and all planned features come to fruition, I’m excited about where Noct is going, and for the groundwork that it is laying for other indie developers.
