The Night is Grey is a point-and-click adventure game developed by Whalestork interactive. The game was released on Steam on 5 January 2024 and is available for PC and macOS. Founded in 2018, the indie studio makes its debut with The Night is Grey.

The Night is Grey: A Neverending Night

The Night is Grey begins with our protagonist, Graham, fleeing from a pack of wolves in the woods. Lost and confused, he stumbles upon a small lodge where we find little Hannah, an eight-year-old girl. Speaking to her, we discover that her mother has gone out and is not expected to return.

Graham decides to take the child to her grandparents. This is the beginning of a dangerous pilgrimage through a dark forest.

My pockets are always full

The Night is Grey is a point-and-click game with a minimalist interface in which we rely solely on the two mouse buttons to perform all the necessary actions. To increase the sense of immersion, the developers have avoided adding too many elements to the interface, so to talk to a character, pick up an object or look at it, all you have to do is click on it. To help us find all the interacting elements in the scene, there is a function that displays clickable hotspots.

Furthermore, unlike many point-and-click games where the protagonist fills his pockets with dozens of useless objects that act as distractions, in The Night is Grey Graham will not rummage through the rubbish or pick up specks of dust for no reason (The fan of Thimbleweed Park will understand).

Even after using the item, if it is no longer needed, our dear Graham will get rid of it with a very well done animation, so as not to fill his pockets too much. This helps to make the game much smoother and prevents the narrative flow from being interrupted by puzzles.

In fact, although the puzzles are challenging, it was very rare that we found ourselves stuck. Many of the puzzles also offer in-game hints. All of this helps to keep the story flowing.

Also, to avoid disrupting the narrative flow and distracting the player, the riddles are not interconnected. The game is also divided into chapters, which reduces the number of areas that can be explored at once.

Diving into the dark

The Night is Grey is not a game for everyone, as it is not a classic point-and-click game full of light humour and silly situations. On the contrary, The Night is Grey is a thriller that deals with sensitive themes such as trauma, violence and abuse. In such cases, it is never easy for storytellers to avoid making missteps. In the case of The Night is Grey, however, the developers were able to deal with such complicated issues by adapting them perfectly to the game’s plot.

The characters are very carefully drawn, and each of them is not a simple stereotype or cliché, but has multiple facets that make them unique and complex.

There are some clues in the game that give insight into Graham’s past and why he has complicated relationships with everyone he meets. However, they do not sufficiently prepare us for the final plot twist.

We felt that the ending fitted in with the plot. However, there are not enough elements for us to justify the ending and to draw a clear moral from it. This gives us the feeling that the ending is a bit rushed and would have deserved more development.

Out of the forest

The Night is Grey is a point-and-click game that uses the hand drawings typical of old-school point-and-click games, combined with animated backgrounds that make the scene dynamic and deep. This creates a visual immersion that engages the player.

The animated sequences are fluid and well thought out. For example, when Graham sighs and wipes his glasses at the same time, we can feel the same discomfort he feels when faced with a difficulty.

Even the soundtrack seems to have been carefully crafted for each scene. It manages to convey the feelings of the protagonists and the sense of unease that accompanies us all the way to Hannah’s grandparents’ house.

With the exception of a few puzzles, we did not encounter any difficulties in completing the game, although we did notice that some of them could cause problems for colour-blind players. Also in terms of accessibility, there are some sections that require actions that require quickness from the player.

One small drawback is the technical department. Although the graphics are of a high standard, the title is not well optimised. Despite the fact that the video card used on our system is well above the recommended requirements, the title keeps the GPU and VRAM at 100%. It also lacks graphics options, such as changing screen resolution or playing in windowed mode.

To complete it we took around 7.5 hours.