One Night Trilogy
| One Night Trilogy | |
|---|---|
| Developer(s) | Dark Gaia Studios |
| Publisher(s) | Dark Gaia Studios |
| Engine | RPG Maker VX |
| Platform(s) | Windows |
| Release | January 2, 2009 (One Night) July 10, 2009 (One Night 2) April 10, 2011 (Full Circle) |
| Genre(s) | Survival Horror |
| Mode(s) | Single player |
The One Night Trilogy is the collective title for a series of three freeware indie survival horror games developed by Dark Gaia Studios (who also developed Legionwood: Tale of the Two Swords) using the RPG Maker VX engine. The games were released over a three year period and since then have garnered considerable attention in the indie gaming community and elsewhere, even being featured in PC Gamer magazine. [1]. The three games do not follow in chronological order.
Overview
The One Night Trilogy, comprised of three games: One Night, One Night 2: The Beyond and One Night: Full Circle, is a series of 2D tile-based overhead survival horror games. The three games tell the story of an attempt to invade Earth by a race of supernatural shadow people and a collection of protagonists who attempt to survive the attacks and fight against them. The origins of the creatures and their motives are detailed in the prequel, One Night 2: The Beyond, while the first and third games deal with subsequent invasion attempts and the conclusion to the conflict.
Since their release in the RPG Maker community, the three games have become considerably widespread. The third game was featured in the October 2011 issue of PC Gamer in the USA, where it was listed as an "adorable top down horror game"[2] while the series overall has been stated as "ranking up there with some of the better games from the RPG Maker scene" by Sore Losers Gaming, an indie blog[3]. The first game was also featured on the official RPG Maker website [4] and all three games have been reviewed positively within the RPG Maker community.
One Night
One Night is the first game in the series, released in January of 2009[5]. It takes place in July of 2012 and follows an amnesiac CIA agent named Colt, who awakens in a crumbling research facility infested by otherworldly monsters. He eventually teams up with another surviving agent and together they discover that the facility administrator sabotaged an experiment in the facility, causing it to be swallowed up in an inter-dimensional portal and "merge" with another universe, which has resulted in most of the facility's staff turning into monsters.
Ultimately, Colt reverses the "merge" and returns the facility to normality, allowing him to escape, though it is unclear who manipulated the facility administrator to cause the "merge" and why. This loose end is explored in the third game, which is a direct sequel. Depending on how they played, the player can receive one of three endings, where Colt survives alongside one, both, or none, of the facility's other survivors. According to One Night: Full Circle, the ending where Colt is the sole survivor is considered the correct one.
One Night 2: The Beyond
One Night 2: The Beyond, released six months following the first game[6], takes place nearly two decades earlier, in July of 1989, and follows two protagonists (John Faraday, a detective and Sara Wickson, a writer) as they become trapped in a supposedly haunted mansion named "The Beyond" and try to survive the night. Working together, they discover that the mansion was built on top of a series of old coal mines wherein a construction of extraterrestrial origin has been buried since the late Bronze Age.
The beings within the construction, known as "shadow people", who possess psychokinetic powers, have been driven from their own world due to war and have fled to Earth, which they plan to conquer. However, their journey to Earth has weakened them and they have remained in suspended animation underneath the mansion for thousands of years, awakening in the mid 20th Century to regain their powers by slowly bringing the mansion and the surrounding countryside under their control.
By the point of the game's beginning, they have almost regained full power, and, after uncovering their back story and unlocking the way to the mines, the game's protagonists defeat them, reducing their power to almost nothing once again and releasing the house from their control.
One Night 2 has been regarded as the best game in the trilogy[7], and reviewers have noted its similarities to both the works of H.P Lovecraft and the first Alone In The Dark game.
One Night: Full Circle
One Night: Full Circle is the third and final game in the One Night Trilogy, released more than three years after the original game in April of 2011[8]. It takes place seven years after the original game, and thirty years after the second game, in 2019. It follows the story of Tom Hawking, as he searches for his sister Alyssa, who vanished in the town of Stillwater three months prior. He journeys to the town of Stillwater to find it abandoned and infested with monsters and shadow people, and, after meeting up with Colt, the protagonist of One Night who has also been drawn to the town, must discover what has happened and how it is connected to the events of the previous games.
In the course of exploring the town, Tom and Colt learn that after their defeat at the end of the second game, the shadow people left "The Beyond" behind to find other ways to regain their lost power. Seeking to create an influx of negative energy to reinvigorated them, they placed John Faraday (one of the protagonists of One Night 2) under their control and used him to blackmail a government researcher, leading to the events of One Night. As they were foiled by Colt, they were once again left powerless, and the catastrophe that has befallen Stillwater is yet another attempt to rupture the fabric of reality and gather more power. Full Circle covers the shadow people's final attempt to control humanity and, depending on moral choices made by the player during the game, they either succeed or are defeated once and for all in one of two endings.
Links to other works by Dark Gaia Studios
The creator of the games has stated that the events of the first One Night game are tied into the previously developed RPG, Legionwood: Tale of the Two Swords. The final boss of both games is named Castoth and is implied to be the same creature, sealed in a pocket dimension at the end of Legionwood, where he is once again fought in One Night.
He has also stated that he would like to write a trilogy of novels based on the series, and that several of his published works contain references to the series and the shadow people.<ref>Legionwood Webs Website One short story, The Lonely Man seems to take place in the motel from One Night: Full Circle and contains a creature similar to that game's antagonists, while the script for a television pilot named Under My Skin has a premise very similar to that of One Night 2: The Beyond. A third story, which was removed from the website for later publication (entitled Clement Cove) features a construct similar to the one seen in One Night 2 and One Night: Full Circle.
References
- ^ [PC Gamer USA, October 2011, "Level Up: Four of the best games made with RPG Maker"]
- ^ [PC Gamer USA, October 2011, "One Night: Full Circle" in "Level Up"]
- ^ "One Night 2: The Beyond" on Sore Losers Blog.
- ^ [http://blog.rpgmakerweb.com/games/3-games-for-halloween/ RPG Maker Web: 3 Games for Halloween.
- ^ Gamespot Game Profile (One Night)
- ^ Gamespot Game Profile (One Night 2)
- ^ "One Night 2: The Beyond" on Sore Losers Blog.
- ^ Gamespot Game Profile (One Night: Full Circle)
See also
Legionwood: Tale of the Two Swords, a notable role playing video game by the same author. Shadow People, the phenomenon used a basis for the series antagonists.