NightSky Review - Newtonian Delight

NightSky is a physics puzzle game developed by Nifflas Games, a one man team by the name of Niklas Nygren. NightSky is a relaxing, casual experience. I’ve written a little on physics based puzzle games like these before and they tend to be a hit or miss affair as it’s rather difficult to manipulate objects in predictable ways if the physics and the puzzle design isn’t done perfectly. Night Sky fortunately doesn’t exhibit any of these issues.



NightSky begins with a boy finding this mysterious glowing ball on a beach. He takes it back home and has these weird dreams. Of the black ball moving along in these places that have weird creatures. Hence the premise is set for this physics puzzle game.

Use momentum to solve puzzles

In NighSky, you use the left and right arrow keys to move the ball around. The A key is used as a brake and to slow the ball down and S is used to move faster or accelerate. The game starts our really simple with very straight forward traversal puzzles. You’ll have to use the balls momentum to move it up to certain places.

The game does a lot to switch things around. Some of the balls abilities are disabled or even changed to add new puzzle elements. You’ll find yourself  pressing S to turn off gravity in some levels to get to the exit of the level. And while in zero gravity, your left and right controls of the ball is flipped just to mess things up for you more.

Great variety of puzzle types. The game does a lot to change things up.

What’s even more impressive are the vehicle levels. There are all sort of contraptions that move in weird ways. Some hop, fly, skate, hover, and you control these vehicle by using the left and right arrow keys to manipulate the ball that is in the vehicle.

Really ingenious, but the vehicle levels themselves are not that interesting sadly. Often just requiring you to move past some obstacles. Which is a shame. I suppose the real pleasure of these levels is just watching how these weird mechanical devices work and move.

A lot of the levels also require you to manipulate objects in the previous screens/levels to solve puzzles in the next screen. You’ll often have to back track to check things out and figure it out. There’s also some genuinely brilliant levels where the game requires you to use these pinball paddles to hit the ball or other objects to make things happen. Very creative.

The vehicles levels are amazing. Even if it is to just see what weird contraption you'll be controlling.

NightSky is a well crafted and polished physics puzzle game. Its levels are generally well designed with maybe only a few of them being a little frustrating and a bit out of place in terms of their difficulty. There are two difficulty levels, casual(which is normal) and alternative which ramps up the challenge and all the levels are designed to be a lot harder.

I thought the check point system in the game wasn’t perfect and you had to redo a puzzle or two sometimes if you died. Night Sky is still  very  good puzzle game and well worth the money. I hate to say this because 1) I’m a PC gamer and 2) because I don’t own these devices but NightSky would be perfect for the mobile devices like the Iphone or Ipad. You can purchase Night Sky here for USD$7.20 until Monday. The price will set at USD$10 after Monday. There’s a demo you can download here.


Pros:

• Good variety of puzzles.
  
• Mechanics of how the ball works gets switched around.
  
• Puzzles are very well design in such a way that the physics work perfectly.
  
• Lots of creativity displayed in this small indie title.
  
• Loved the vehicle levels simply for how these vehicles work.
  
• Nice art style, reminds me of limbo.
  
• Great ambient atmosphere. And that’s something you can hardly say about a 2D puzzle game.
  
• Excellent music by Chris Schlarb.

Cons:

• Checkpoints can be quite a ways back. Its not as bad as a lot of games, but it’s not exactly re spawning in the same level you died. You’ll often have to redo a puzzle or two you’ve beaten.
  
• Some levels are a tad bit more difficult than the general difficulty curve of the entire game.
  
• The vehicle levels themselves are not that interesting in terms of level design.

Verdict: A polished and impressively creative casual physics puzzle game. Exquisite!