Night Book

My first honest reaction to Night Book was relief that I knew what I was getting into. Wales Interactive make FMV choose-your-own-adventure titles, full stop, and this one is a compact occult horror built entirely around a locked-apartment setup filmed remotely during COVID lockdown. Every actor shot their own footage separately, which means no two characters ever share a physical space, and the whole story is framed through Loralyn's laptop screen and a network of home security cameras. It is, mechanically, about as close to watching a film as a "game" can get. The core loop is binary choices on a timer: lock the door or don't, take the call or ignore it. A butterfly-effect indicator flashes in the corner when a decision actually branches the narrative, which is a neat touch. There are 15 endings spread across roughly 220 scenes, and the scene-skip function on repeat playthroughs means you can burn through alternative paths in 20 minutes once you know the story. The relationship stat tracking Loralyn's standing with other characters is present but its mechanical influence on outcomes stays murky throughout. If you want something closer to Her Story's open investigative puzzle or The Bunker's puzzle-FMV hybrid, Night Book won't scratch that itch. The interactivity ceiling is low and the game is self-aware enough that it includes a Streamer Mode that removes the timer entirely, which says a lot about the intended audience. Where Night Book earns its runtime is the cast. Julie Dray anchors the whole thing with a genuinely believable performance under pressure, juggling a stressful remote job, a possessed father, a long-distance fiance with suspicious motives, and an advanced pregnancy. Colin Salmon shows up in one of the branching paths alongside Jonathan Cullen as a rare book dealer, and that fork in the story produces some of the more interesting scene work in the whole runtime. The audio design adds real texture when characters tip into possession territory. The weakness is the horror itself. The scares lean on well-worn found-footage tricks, flickering CCTV static, sudden noise bursts, and the demon threat rarely feels as menacing as the setup promises. Critics were split down the middle on this, and Steam's "Mixed" rating at around 67% positive from 520 reviews reflects that divide pretty accurately. FMV fans skew positive; horror fans expecting actual tension tend to come away cold. Production-wise, the lockdown constraints are visible if you know to look. No two people ever physically share a frame, which occasionally strains credulity during dramatic confrontations reduced to video calls. Still, the fact that actors managed their own lighting, continuity and camera work on Blackmagic rigs across Cardiff, Birmingham, Paris and London, and the result still feels cohesive, is quietly impressive. The story's mythology, an indigenous island tribe, a forbidden language called Kannar, a cursed book traded through shady interpreters, is more interesting in concept than execution. The pacing front-loads exposition through the possessed father character in a way that makes him feel more like a narrator than an antagonist. Bottom line: Night Book is worth your time if you are already on board with the FMV interactive movie format. It is not a gateway into the genre, and it is not Wales Interactive's strongest entry in that catalog. For anyone who finished The Complex or Late Shift and wants another short-session horror story to pick apart across a few evenings, it fits that gap cleanly.

Alex · Scout Team

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