Boston, 2039.  Amid concerns over personal privacy and economic freedom, a young ‘Cyberpunk’ finds himself embroiled in a conspiracy that will shake the very foundations of global society. 

Last October, I played through Night/Shift (not to be confused with Lucasfilm’s Night Shift!), a free Hi-Res HAM8 graphic adventure game from Eclectic Imaginations released in June 2023. It was quite the experience, one that was relatively short (two hours) and ultimately enjoyable, but recommending this game comes with a caveat that I’ll discuss shortly.

Firstly, the game itself is a real looker. You’ll explore its world made up of HAM8 still images via hotspots in a way that’ll feel familiar to anyone who has played graphic text adventures or Myst-like games. They’re absolutely gorgeous and rich in detail. All have some lovely sound effects and snatches of sampled music to add atmosphere. This comes with a price, however; there is no floppy disk version and the LHA file unpacks to 23 MB. However, it will run on the most humble AGA machine (such as an A1200 with 2MB of chipram). 

The game tells its story via text and the occasional headshot. There is a lot of reading involved and minimal amounts of puzzling. There are no dead ends or difficult puzzles; it’s clear that the designer wanted to tell a story first and foremost. And this is where the caveat I mentioned comes in. 

Night/Shift is rooted in the ‘cypherpunk’ philosophy and movement that first surfaced in the ’70s but was formalized in 1993 with the publication of a manifesto advocating for strong private cryptography and resisting any efforts of cryptography regulation.

“The people in this room hope for a world where an individual’s informational footprints—everything from an opinion on abortion to the medical record of an actual abortion—can be traced only if the individual involved chooses to reveal them; a world where coherent messages shoot around the globe by network and microwave, but intruders and feds trying to pluck them out of the vapor find only gibberish; a world where the tools of prying are transformed into the instruments of privacy. There is only one way this vision will materialize, and that is by widespread use of cryptography.” – Eric Hughes, 1993

The game’s plot revolves around some of these principles, contemporary data and identity privacy concerns, and advocacy for decentralized blockchain currency. Characters in the game often deliver long monologues that very much feel like they’re the designer’s philosophies; they really want to talk about them to us. Many of the problems that the future society of 2039 struggles with are extrapolations of concerns we have today over privacy, social media and AI. So ultimately, your enjoyment of Night/Shift crucially balances on whether you want to play a game with a narrative deeply rooted in it and if you have the patience to wade through sporadic walls of text. 

It’s not all doom-and-gloom and waxing philosophical. There are moments of humour and nostalgia for the 1990s computer scene that I won’t spoil in detail. These made me smile and were refreshing after all the seriousness. 

I did, however, encounter occasional moments of frustration. The load times between some scenes can be lengthy and you will be asked to go back and forth between them in rapid succession (‘But I just came from there!’). It’s not always obvious where you need to go, especially at the start of the game where you’re required to wander about until you hit a trigger and a certain event kick. You also have to do a fair amount of screen-sweeping with the mouse in some of the scenes as hotspots aren’t marked. 

Oh, and there’s a single scene of nudity but it can be avoided if so desired.  

All in all, Night/Shift is an enjoyable and intriguing visual novel-style adventure game with great visuals and atmosphere. It also has plenty of philosophical statements it wants to make. As the game bills itself, Night/Shft is dystopic and nostalgic, but it may be too much of the former for absolutely everyone to enjoy it. 

Download Night/Shift here: https://www.nightshift.cx/