A short, uneventful platformer that manages to provide a brief blast of enjoyment before being over – at least the price is reasonable.
| Developer | |
| Publisher | |
| Franchise | Midnight |
| Genre | 2D Platformer |
| PSTV | Yes |
| Physical English | No |
World-building & Story
In 36 Fragments of Midnight you play as Midnight, a non-descript little white square who has to collect – you guessed it – 36 fragments for a shadowy race of little Furmins-esque creatures. That’s all there is to it, but given the game can be fully completed in a little under 2 hours, there doesn’t need to be any more than this.
There are glimmers of a more interesting world as you go about your adventure – the brooding backgrounds and dark colour palette invite you to wonder about where exactly you are, but the title doesn’t go into any more depth than this.
Presentation & Sound
36 Fragments of Midnight manages to stand out in a sea of 2D platformers on Vita thanks to some neat visual tricks that make for a memorable experience – even if there is a certain blandness that permeates through everything.
The game relies heavily on atmosphere – backgrounds are a mix of twilight blues, purples and greys while all the platforms and traps you’ll come across are pitch black. The developers play on this, including sections where Midnight will be a source of light and there’s some decent shadow and lighting work in these sections. There’s also a constant snowfall which again helps create a sombre mood – expanded by the lack of music with only the howl of wind for sound aside from the twinkle of the fragments.
36 Fragments runs well on Vita and I felt everything was responsive – hardly surprising given it was originally a 3DS title, but worth noting nevertheless. And this pretty much sums up the presentation – it’s fine, it’s what you’d expect, but offers nothing more than this.
Gameplay & Content
Reminiscent of trap-laden ‘tough’ 2D platformers like Super Meat Boy, 36 Fragments of Midnight challenges you to finish the whole game in one run – something I wasn’t quite expecting as I’d anticipated a level-based title. It actually works well as a fun little distraction, but I came away wishing for something more substantial.
Midnight is very easy to control – responsive to inputs which is important as precision platforming is required, meaning you can zip around the levels and between the obstacles easily. He’s got a limited moveset (double jumps and moving left and right) but you’ll be challenged on timing, reactions and forward-planning on numerous occasions through the tough gauntlets that get thrown at you.
There’s definitely an element of waiting for the right moment in the platforming, as not perfecting your timing quite often means death – so careful navigation is required, but thankfully respawning is fairly fast. So you’ll weave around each area, scoping it out and collecting everything you need to until you’ve found all of the fragments, after which you return to the start of the map.
When I first started playing I expected to make my way through the game level-by-level but that isn’t the case – 36 Fragments is one giant level that at first seems procedurally generated, changing up every time you restart. I quickly realised this wasn’t the case – there are a set number of platforming challenges in the title and these move around every time you restart, meaning it is a new experience each time (you never quite know what section will come next) but things are sort of the same too.
This actually worked really well for progression – because you’re seeing the same platforming bits over and over, you’d slowly get better with each run and start getting further and further into the game – which is a nice feeling. Unfortunately this comes at the expense of length as I finished my first run within about 40 minutes of starting and had platinum-ed it within 2 hours.
I did have a few issues while playing – the main one being that game uses different ‘screens’ between certain areas (presumably due to loading issues) and this could cause some frustrating deaths at times. You might have to jump through a gap in the ceiling to reach a new area without being able to see what’s there, only to leap straight into a spiked floor and die – this happened a little too often for my liking and definitely needed changing up. There were also a couple of times the same sections repeated over and over which seemed fairly glitchy, but this is a fairly minor point.
If 36 Fragments had been created in LittleBigPlanet‘s level creator I’d have been mighty impressed and ultimately that’s how I’d describe it – it feels like the kind of neat fan game with some smart mechanics. As a paid title it’s held to different standards and I’d expect a lot more from it – yet, it’s so cheap that it’s difficult to criticise as a fun time-waster – just don’t expect too much because it’ll be over before you know it.
Conclusion
36 Fragments of Midnight offers a minor distraction – it’s an incredibly short game with no incentive to return to it, but it’s also budget-priced to make up for this. If you do choose to pick it up, expect a fairly standard 2D platformer with a plethora of obstacles and traps to avoid – it’s technically sound, but wholly unoriginal and unadventurous. You can do worse, but there’s also plenty of better titles available on Vita too.
4.5/10
kresnik258gaming 