



By King Padmore / June 7, 2016

Night Trap for Mobile: Yes, It's Real and It's Spectacular



We got our hands on the mobile prototype for the FMV classic Night Trap. Here are our first impressions.











I must admit, when I first started watching the video claiming to show a prototype of Night Trap on a phone, I was very skeptical. After all, Night Trap's complicated structure and immense amount of simultaneously-playing video made it a programming nightmare. How could something of this magnitude be made by one person with no budget and no fanfare? About three minutes into watching the video, my doubts began to fade away. Somebody actually figured it out, and this might be the version that brings the FMV classic back to modern gaming devices.



After conducting an interview with the developer, Tyler Hogle, I was offered a copy of the prototype to try for myself. After a few days and many hours of play time (even on the go!), here are my first impressions:







THE INTERFACE IS FAMILIAR BUT HAS BEEN VASTLY IMPROVED



The design of the interface is where the game really shines. The layout is instantly recognizable for fans and retains that nostalgic feel, but is much easier to use. Firstly, the trap button is now a color-changing icon and it's a brilliant touch. The old colored trap meter is now integrated directly into the trap button which changes to red when it's time to trap an intruder. The thumbprint image on the button is not just cool-looking, it also serves as a clear indicator of how to play for first-timers. The true highlight of the interface, however, is in the room icons...

[Hover over image for comparison]





THE NEW ROOM ICONS ARE, LITERALLY, A GAME CHANGER.



In place of the old room icons, which were just drawings representing the rooms, we now get video thumbnails that actually show the current camera feed from the other rooms. When you touch a video feed, the feed from that room instantly appears on the main screen. The room switches are much faster than in previous iterations.



The camera feed on the room icons are presented in monochrome and have added noise/static and low frame rates. This ramps up the difficulty so the player still feels a sense of urgency when playing, but you no longer have to switch from room to room just to find the action; the action is playing out in real-time on the thumbnails. This design choice completely changes the gameplay and strategies for winning, plus you get a much better sense of what's going on in the house at any one time.



In previous versions of the game, there was no way of knowing when a person was entering a room, so you basically had to memorize the rooms to go to or you had to write down a list of rooms and times to capture the required number of augers to proceed in the game. As memory games go, that's pretty fun, but Hogle's version actually feels more like what I imagine the creators wanted it to feel like; You must keep an eye on all of the camera feeds and make quick decisions to capture the augers and protect the girls. No more memorization or lists, just reacting to the environment. It feels like the training wheels have been taken off. The feeling is actually like using a modern consumer security system that one might set up on a tablet or phone. For a game that gets a lot of attention for its retro vibe, this version, ironically, feels like the future.



