Recensione Earthnight (Nintendo Switch)

Video games on smartphones have also seen completely original genres among their ranks, which are then hardly taken up by other consoles or other schools of thought regarding "how to do" a video game.  Super Mario Run, Jetpack Joyride, Temple Run they are all video games that in one way or another represent the sublimations concerning the endless runner videogame genre, one of the original inventions of a world made up mainly of smartphones and tablets. Earthnight is a kind of bastard son of the genus which is hybridized with a thousand other things, in order to bring innovation to the genre and to pull its way of being understood out of the hat. The title arrives, with great surprise, on almost all the main consoles of today's world without completely abandoning its main platform (the title is in fact available on the Apple Arcade subscription service).

In a world of complicated control systems, Endless Runners are a refreshing experience. These video games have a clear arcade matrix and ask the player very little information in order to be properly absorbed. In the player's hand there will be an avatar who will have to run along a more or less infinite path, collecting upgrades and collectibles in the middle in order to simplify his journey and dramatically increase his score. In the endless lists of endless runners present in today's videogame market we can find two-dimensional runners, three-dimensional runners, runners who integrate storylines and missions but we cannot name another product with the artistic potential that instead belongs to EarthNight.

Cleversoft's title is far better than its competition and aspires straight to the top of a mountain of corpses made of licensed games and hasty titles made to pick up a few coins. Fishing left and right from various genres and various inspirations, let's see together if this EarthNight is worth playing.

Flying dragons and atmospheres.

The narrative proposal with which EarthNight approaching the player is strange to say the least and immediately presents itself as an excellent starting point for the most artistically sensitive players. In the future described by the title, the earth is not exactly as we remember it today; our pale blue dot has become the abode of dragons and humans have become subjected to them; to rebel against this strange assumption we will find Stanley, Sidney and a curious mad scientist with an indispensable orbiting space station. Stanley and Sidney, both humans with clear supernatural powers, along with the aforementioned mad scientist are the only ones with the necessary skills to ride these huge Chinese dragons, of different colors and natures, in order to attack their skull to defeat them.

To be infested is not so much the earth's crust as the whole atmosphere that nowadays we breathe and observe looking at the sky; Earthnight, in its descent towards the earth, asks the player to cross four different segments of the atmosphere each time facing different dragons in color and nature. Starting a game will mean choosing a character (Sidney and Stanley control each other in a slightly different way, as we will see later) and it means starting to grind miles on the backs of these millennial monsters, collecting objects of any nature that could always come in handy for a reason. or for the other.

The back of the dragons is in fact sprinkled with a practically indefinable quantity of objects and adversaries, parasites that help the survival of the giant beast and that represent the majority of the challenges you will face. In this linear path in the shoes of the aforementioned characters the player will have the task of avoiding and jumping when necessary, collecting souvenirs to bring back to the scientist, killing enemies and then coming to collide with the mythological beast with a few blows to the head. A type of Robot Unicorn Attack artistically flawless.

Collected the objects, eliminated the monsters, defeated the dragon, the player will find himself having to descend into the ether towards the earth itself, choosing his next victim, progressively decreasing his altitude as in an enterprise of Baumgartneriana memory. Earthnight's poetry begins right here and unravels overwhelmingly thanks to a wise use of music and visual choices: a camera behind your character will show the absurd view of a human being against countless, titanic dragons; an adrenaline rush will do nothing but arrive quickly in the blood of the player, accompanied by the splendid soundtrack present and which will start a simple but effective gameplay loop.

Spicy gameplay.

Virtually the title could have ended up here: EarthNight phe ends up being a kind of poetic endless runner for kind hearts and instead goes further. In addition to having characters with different movement systems, who prefer different playstyles, collect items within EarthNight will allow the player to unlock a huge plethora of power-ups that will simplify the next journey. Collected items (ranging from junk, gold coins, dragon's teeth or their eggs) hyear different values ​​in game in game and go to increase the water reserves of your space station, creating an infinite appeal to the personal satisfaction of the player who will find himself throwing himself into these semi-impossible challenges from game to game in order to obtain that much desired egg.

All the instruments of the title can be upgraded repeatedly, giving the formula a longevity that is around ten hours if you can appreciate the gameplay loop. Each dragon faced will have on its back a different variety of opponents (each with specific patterns and abilities), a different variety of traps to avoid and so on, giving an interesting variety to a game formula. During the later stages of the game, try to get to the dragon's head it will be an extremely complicated challenge where any mistake can be fatal, forcing (in fact) the player to a conservative and concentrated style of play. This perpetually upward difficulty that is accentuated in the final stages gives solidity to the challenge, providing the player with a roof for their skills increasingly difficult to achieve.

The formula set up by Cleversoft is obviously not without flaws. First of all we would like to point out a basic uncertainty that goes away only after many hours in recognizing objects and enemies on the fly; the latter, also thanks to the very particular designs, they can sometimes be exchanged for weird collectibles and will end in game over more than a few games. To this must also be added an exposition of the contents that is not always crystal clear, with all the mechanics sometimes not even mentioned by the game itself and left at the mercy of the player's ingenuity; a very old-school choice which, however, does not add anything special to the gameplay or content of the title, making it simply more difficult to use.

Smiling screens.

From a purely technical point of view EarthNight, in the version we tested on Nintendo Switch, did not present any problems whatsoever. Armed with excellent quality two-dimensional graphics, with detailed drawings and loads of style, the title does not present particular slowdowns even during the most excited phases, sinning just by some charging time a little longer than what it would be logical to expect, especially in the passage from one segment to the next of the atmosphere. The artistic style of the title is unusual and draws from incredibly different situations, featuring Chinese dragons, oriental demons and monsters that appear to have come out of a children's version of HP Lovecraft's short stories.

The arcade flavor of the title is finely embellished with a particularly well crafted chiptune soundtrack, all the work of the musician Chipocrite which presents synthetic sounds with a good variety of moods. The very first stage, set to music by the splendid Little Computer People, alone is likely to be worth the purchase price given the adrenaline rush it manages to give. The other tracks are also very interesting, all melodically inspired and with the ability to masterfully adapt to the visual choices present within the title.

The title features just a single player mode without the presence of additions such as online leaderboard which would have further improved its longevity; a little wasted opportunity.

EarthNight is a strange product. The title of Cleaversoft draws many endless runners in a scholastic way, making fun of them and rewriting their hinges, in order to obtain a different and fun experience. With an inspired artistic style, an exciting soundtrack and simple yet in-depth gameplay, the video game is proposed as a playful pastime from “yet another and I'm going to sleep”, thanks to quick and fun games. To undermine the overall evaluation we find some user experience problems, with opponents not always perfectly visible on the screen and we find some loading screens slightly longer than expected.