(Vita) Night Trap – 25th Anniversary Edition review

The infamous retro adventure gets a new lick of paint and is surprisingly a lot of fun – just not on Vita, where a progression-halting bug completely destroys the experience.

Developer	Digital Pictures; Screaming Villains
Publisher	Screaming Villains; Limited Run Games
Franchise	N/A
Genre	Adventure
PSTV	No
Physical English	Yes – NA only (LRG)

 

World-building & Story

Taking place at a high school slumber party, Night Trap follows a group of girls at the Martin family home as they fend off an invasion of ‘augers’ (vampires) who have decided to raid the home to try and drain the blood from their new guests.

It’s a silly setup (although not one I’ve really come across in gaming before, particularly as it’s used as a ruse to get an agent in since another group of girls disappeared at the house prior to the events of the game) and is used by the developers to fully embrace its campy, b-movie slasher inspirations. This is a game where groups of clueless girls run around a house screaming to escape the augers and it’s up to you (as the member of SCAT – Special Control Attack Team – with control of the cameras and traps in the house) to save them and I absolutely loved that, as hammy as it sounds.

The main story focuses on Kelli (played by Dana Plato), a SCAT team member posing as one of the girls attending the party who helps the player capture the Augers. Along the way you’ll meet a variety of characters ranging from Danny, the younger brother of one of the girls to Victor and Sheila Martin, the rather suspicious owners of the house who seem to have a close relationship with the Augers. Surprisingly for such a short game, every character is memorable and has a decent role to play in the plot, making it easy to get sucked into the story.

The most interesting thing about Night Trap is the way the story is told, though. As you’re controlling various cameras and looking through the different rooms, you’ll only catch bits and pieces of what’s going on across the 25 minute invasion – therefore you’ll need to play through multiple times to truly figure out what’s happening. That makes the game a lot more replayable as it is interesting to watch – although thankfully, this Vita port includes an option that allows you to see all the story in chronological order.

 

Presentation & Sound

While its interface has been given a new lick of paint and its FMV’s updated, this is largely the same Night Trap from the 90’s – a nice nostalgia piece of its time.

So the UI is basically presented like a security camera control room – you’ll be able to flick between the eight different rooms in the bottom right and there’s a bright Crystal Maze-esque map to the top right (if you’re using the modern UI options). Then at the left is footage of what’s happening on whatever camera you’re watching – if there are characters it’ll show them, otherwise it’ll be a static screen. You can change the UI based on some previous versions of the game, which is a nice little bonus for fans.

The quality of the FMV’s is pretty good – they’ve been remastered and look a lot clearer. They’re very much of their time – crop tops and high-waisted jogging pants, baggy shirts and pants etc, but it’s nice as a little snapshot of this time. The acting is as hammy as you’d expect – the cast don’t take anything too seriously which gives it a lovely b-movie feel. There are little technical hitches like obvious transitions when you’re triggering traps, but honestly this just adds to the game’s charm.

For some reason the theme to Night Trap is insanely good, although the soundtrack overall isn’t up to a whole lot. Voices are as cheesy as the actual acting but it’s nice to see it included all the same – although in this Vita port it often gets muddled up with multiple tracks playing at the same time which is disappointing.

Soundtrack highlight – Theme Song

 

Gameplay & Content

Night Trap is really unlike anything I’ve played before (doubly so on Vita) and is the kind of title that will either work for you or not. Personally, I quite enjoyed it although there are plenty of frustrations and this Vita port is undoubtedly the worst (and completely broken) way to play.

So your goal as a member of SCAT is to monitor the cameras in the Martin house and trigger traps when the augers come in range of them. This is done (as previously mentioned) by switching between the security cameras and waiting for an auger to come near a trap, after which the sensor in the middle of the screen will turn red and you can press triangle to trap them. The difficulty comes from being in the right place at the right time to do this and it’ll take some significant trial and error to achieve this unless you use a guide.

That’s basically all there is to the gameplay – watching thumbnails and triggering traps. There is a ‘code’ system where you’ll need to change the security colour based on secret conversations by the Martin family, which again requires a mix of trial and error. In reality Night Trap is a very fiddly game that can be enormously frustrating at times given that you’ll be punished often for making the wrong choice in a split second.

Yet I found it strangely addictive to keep fiddling around with the systems and trying to catch augers. There’s only a few circumstances that lead to a game over (mostly when one of the girls gets captured) meaning you’re free to experiment making slow progress, which can also lead to a variety of different endings. It helps that despite the story being mostly campy drivel, I did find it pretty amusing and wanted to find out what was going to happen in the end (the game is only about 25 minutes long).

The massive problem here comes in the form of the Vita port which is incredibly sloppy. I’m told the remastered version has odd cues for traps across all platforms but it seems especially bad on Vita, where I couldn’t actually finish the game since some augers never actually showed up and the very final stretch of the story doesn’t trigger which means it can never be finished. There were rumblings of a patch being in Sony QA but given that it’s now a long way past the title’s original release date, it seems unlikely this will ever come out. Don’t get me wrong, Night Trap is playable, but only up until a point which is incredibly frustrating.

This also has implications in other modes – Scene of the Crime and Theatre are both unlocked after completing a perfect game, but since you can’t do that they’re literally impossible to use. There is Survivor, which is a randomly-generated take on Night Trap where you continually trap augers, but the game doesn’t feel built for this and so it’s more an annoying distraction than a credible way to extend the admittedly short lifespan.

It’s such a shame too because this is a quirky piece of videogame history that actually has an amusing nostalgia-based place in today’s world, but the version released on Vita is just too broken to really be worth your time.

 

Conclusion

Considering it’s often listed as one of the worst games ever made, I had a surprising amount of fun with Night Trap. It fully embraces its ridiculous premise and the gameplay is fairly unique and while frustrating can also be addictive – but this Vita port is a complete disaster given that it’s literally unbeatable and large amounts of content are completely locked off. If it ever gets fixed I’d recommend giving the game a try, but until then I’d steer clear but consider picking it up on one of the working platforms like PS4 or Switch.

3.5/10