October Games Analysis: My Night Job

          For the entirety of October (or at least four weeks) I plan to play one game per week for the sake of analyzing it. It could be seen as a review, but I’m not necessarily trying to convince readers to buy the game. I may encourage them to try it, but it would be mainly for design study. The rule is I play the game once per day for a week, then move on to the next game and do the same until I go through all four. I don’t have to finish them; I just have to play them thoroughly. Also, since it’s October these games are coincidentally horror themed. This week’s game is My Night Job.

          I heard about this from Extra Credits. Every so often they suggest some games for everyone to look into. Taking their advice, I bought this and tried it out. What you do as a player is run through this huge house and save people from monsters. It plays a little like Metal Slug with zombies and victims inside a mansion. The goal of the game is to rescue one hundred people. You may escort up to ten people at a time and you take them to a landing pad outside. A helicopter shows up and picks up the survivors. Depending on how many you save depends on how much money you get and then you are given either bonus money, refilled health, or a shotgun.

          As simple as it sounds, this game is brutally hard. It starts off with few monsters ruining the place, but eventually the overrun the house and start breaking rooms. If they break three rooms in the house, the whole place falls apart and you lose. If your Health reaches zero, you die and must start all over. Fortunately, you as a player have several useful mechanics to help you such as picking up weapons to fight with. Your default punching attack is terribly weak, so finding a chair or a shotgun is essential to doing any real damage. As for victims to save, some will actually help you by either fighting alongside you or they give you something useful when saved. The nurse gives you an injection needle that brings you back to life if you die, for example.

          Knowing all of this, I have some issues with the game. First off, the controls are confusing at first. Nothing is listed for movement, but I think it was designed that way because they don’t want you to rebind movement keys. You can rebind other hotkeys, but you’re stuck with the arrows for moving. They also consolidate your actions to the left side of the keyboard. A is for dashing, S is for jumping, and D is for attacking. Again, sort of confusing to get used to, especially the jumping, but it’s not a bad setup.

          One of the biggest flaws to me is how little your character stands out. By himself, his design is unique. If you converted his image into a silhouette, he would still be recognizable. But when you enter a room with a ton of moving things such as bats, zombies, victims, and hellhounds the character becomes almost impossible to spot. It’s easy to lose sight of your position. Losing your sense of location in the game world can result in getting killed unexpectedly among other things. Sometimes I would enter a room without realizing it because I couldn’t see my character. Giving him a bright outline and pushing him towards the front of the screen could raise his visibility.

          However, this is by no means a bad game. It’s pretty good. For one, they come up with this dynamic that creates a lot of tension. You have to save people whilst also killing monsters and keeping the house from being destroyed. Any time a room turns red on the map, the camera pans to it to emphasize its urgency. It’s telling you “GET IN THERE NOW!” Most first timers (like myself) will end up being far away from where they need to be when that alarm goes off. After multiple tries, you start to plan out a path for patrolling rooms. You start thinking about which places will most likely be next for being overloaded with monsters.

          Weapons are essential to winning this game. You can pick up anything with a little arrow over it. That arrow helps point out what in the environment is interactive. Without them, I might not realize that I could lift that guitar and slam it down for heavy damage. The weapons also have durability. After several uses, they break. Not only does it raise tension, it keeps the player constantly looking for a new weapon to try. It encourages variety of weapon use. That being said, there is one weapon that absolutely destroys EVERYTHING in your path: the chainsaw. Somewhere in the basement is this one time use weapon. All you do is pick it up and just run. No need to swing; charge your enemies and watch them fall before you. If this thing didn’t have durability, it would be the go to dominant strategy. It works as a last resort mechanic when everything else has gone to hell.

          But what about the inhabitants of the mansion? All those people trapped inside. Why should you bother saving them? For one, you need to in order to beat the level. Second, they earn you money which determines your score. Third, they affect what you get whenever you turn them in to the helicopters. And finally… they look so human. I know it’s pixel art, but they have good appeal. Their animations make them stand out from each other so it doesn’t feel like all I’m saving is the cheerleader. You start to feel a sort of connection to them when you have them all near you trying to stay alive. And it’s always so sad when monsters attack them and they scream for help (it’s even more heart wrenching when they die). 

          My Night Job is quite an interesting game. It’s definitely something you will need to try over and over again in order to get good at. It’s also a well-designed game with only a few flaws that stick out. Worth looking into.