by NightSky is the kind of game that drops you into its world without a whole lot of explanation. Start a new file and you’ll see a luminescent sphere, your charge that must be navigated over various physics-based environmental challenges. But you don’t need much else to go on, really. In the opaque opening, you wonder over the origins of this mysterious object. Is it alive? Is it a crystal? The answer is unknown. You’ll soon find out how effective a premise it is for the game’s atmospheric, ethereal tone.
Aside from the levels’ wonderful silhouetted art direction – a great mix of prominent shadow geometry and striking color – NightSky features some impressively nuanced touch controls. Swiping the sphere gets it moving, building speed (or sometimes fighting against friction, depending on the level) as it travels.
That said, the tricks with gravity and motion you must learn to pull off – with what essentially feels like a marble, no less – get pretty interesting. Think of it like a platformer without a jump button. Simpler tasks (like making the sphere jump gaps) populate the early levels before moving on to, say, leveraging momentum to perform seemingly impossible vertical leaps up, often in multiple directions. Precision movement is also frequently necessary. Hold a finger down and your sphere can stop on a dime or occasionally work against the slope of gravity.
Though progression through NightSky’s surreal landscapes is a constantly building challenge, there’s a bit of a turning point once you’re forced to start changing the angle and trajectory of a jump. Suddenly even a simple jagged bump on a cavern floor means you need to correct your spin mid-air. Much like precision control, getting the hang of the subtleties of spin isn’t easy, but mastering it is really satisfying – all because the sphere, whatever it is, feels real. The piece de resistance? Even when you think you’ve conquered the game, the alternative remixed mode’s puzzles will put everything you’ve learned to the test.
The bottom line. Tight controls and effective ambience make NightSky one of the best physics platformers around.
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