''Nightlong: Union City Conspiracy'' is a

cyberpunk Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting said to focus on a combination of "low-life and high tech". It features futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberwa ...

-themed

adventure game An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story, driven by exploration and/or puzzle-solving. The genre's focus on story allows it to draw heavily from other narrative-based m ...

developed by Trecision and

Team17 Team 17 Digital Limited (Team17) is a British video game developer and Video game publisher, publisher based in Wakefield, England. The venture was created in December 1990 through the merger of British publisher 17-Bit Software and Swedish dev ...

and published by

MicroProse MicroProse is an American video game publisher and video game developer, developer founded by Bill Stealey, Sid Meier, and Andy Hollis in 1982. It developed and published numerous games, including starting the ''Civilization (series), Civilizat ...

in Europe and

DreamCatcher Interactive DreamCatcher Interactive Inc. (also known as DreamCatcher Games) was a Canadian video game publisher founded in 1996 by Richard Wah Kan. It was best known for its adventure games. In 2006, the company became a subsidiary of JoWooD Entertainmen ...

in North America. It was later

ported In software engineering, porting is the process of adapting software for the purpose of achieving some form of execution in a computing environment that is different from the one that a given program (meant for such execution) was originally desig ...

to the

Amiga Amiga is a family of personal computers produced by Commodore International, Commodore from 1985 until the company's bankruptcy in 1994, with production by others afterward. The original model is one of a number of mid-1980s computers with 16-b ...

by ClickBOOM.

Premise

The game takes place in the futuristic Union City in the year 2099. The player assumes the role of an investigator named Joshua Reev. His long-time friend, Hugh Martens (who is now in charge of the city), summons him to help with a matter of major political importance. It seems that a group of terrorists are threatening the city, and Martens' reporter friend Simon Ruby (who was investigating) has vanished. Martens has called on Reev to investigate.

Gameplay

''Nightlong'' is a

point-and-click Point and click are one of the actions of a computer user moving a pointer to a certain location on a screen (''pointing'') and then pressing a button on a mouse or other pointing device (''click''). An example of point and click is in hypermedi ...

adventure game, predominantly focusing on inventory management and puzzle-solving. The game is played mostly from the

third-person perspective Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to storytelling, convey a narrative, story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to del ...

showing Joshua Reev and his surrounding area. As with many games of the genre,

non-playable character A non-player character (NPC) is a character in a game that is not controlled by a player. The term originated in traditional tabletop role-playing games where it applies to characters controlled by the gamemaster (or referee) rather than by a ...

s appear in some areas and can be interacted with. The navigation interface uses left-click to examine an object, right-click to use, interact with, or combine objects in the game or in Josh's inventory.

Hotspots Hotspot, Hot Spot or Hot spot may refer to: Places * Hot Spot, Kentucky, a community in the United States Arts, entertainment, and media Fictional entities * Hot Spot (comics), a name for the DC Comics character Isaiah Crockett * Hot Spot (Tr ...

are indicated with on-screen text, including area exits. They are labelled as "Go to..." if Josh has yet to explore the area. Background music and sound effects are unobtrusive. There is little dialogue between characters, although the game itself is narrated by Josh as he interacts with the items, areas and characters. If Josh has nothing to say, he will shrug. Strong language infrequently appears in Josh's narration. The game has backgrounds that appear to be a mixture of texture-mapped and hand-drawn graphics. An inventory bar is accessible at the bottom of the screen, and the Escape key is used for the control menu.

Reception

The game received mainly mixed reviews, with reviewers praising the graphics and sound while criticising the plot and complexity of some of the puzzles. The game sold well enough to warrant the later Amiga conversion and a patch release allowing it to be played on

Windows XP Windows XP is a major release of Microsoft's Windows NT operating system. It was released to manufacturing on August 24, 2001, and later to retail on October 25, 2001. It is a direct successor to Windows 2000 for high-end and business users a ...

. Due to its

science fiction Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts. These concepts may include information technology and robotics, biological manipulations, space ...

setting, ''Nightlong'' received an overt recommendation from The Sci-Fi Channel (now SyFy), to the point of Sci-Fi's logo being present on the box art. Along with '' MechCommander'', it was one of the few games to ever be officially recommended by Sci-Fi.

References

External links

* * {{Team17 1998 video games Adventure games Amiga games Cyberpunk video games DreamCatcher Interactive games MicroProse games Point-and-click adventure games ScummVM-supported games Single-player video games Team17 games Trecision games Video games developed in Italy Video games developed in the United Kingdom Video games scored by Bjørn Lynne Video games set in the 2090s Windows games

Premise

Gameplay

Reception

See also

References

External links