''Noctropolis'' is a
1994
File:1994 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The 1994 Winter Olympics are held in Lillehammer, Norway; The Kaiser Permanente building after the 1994 Northridge earthquake; A model of the MS Estonia, which Sinking of the MS Estonia, sank in ...
MS-DOS
MS-DOS ( ; acronym for Microsoft Disk Operating System, also known as Microsoft DOS) is an operating system for x86-based personal computers mostly developed by Microsoft. Collectively, MS-DOS, its rebranding as IBM PC DOS, and a few ope ...
third-person
adventure game
An adventure game is a video game genre in which the player assumes the role of a protagonist in an interactive story driven by exploration and/or Puzzle video game, puzzle-solving. The Video game genres, genre's focus on story allows it to draw ...
by Flashpoint Productions and published by
Electronic Arts
Electronic Arts Inc. (EA) is an American video game company headquartered in Redwood City, California. Founded in May 1982 by Apple employee Trip Hawkins, the company was a pioneer of the early home computer game industry and promoted the d ...
. In the game, the player assumes the role of the character Peter Grey, a lonely bookstore owner who winds up in the world of his favorite comic book. Grey soon discovers that he is destined to assume the role of his former comic book hero.
Gameplay
This style of game play is mostly third-person
point-and-click
Point and click are the actions of a computer user moving a pointer to a certain location on a screen (''pointing'') and then pressing a button on a mouse, usually the left button (''click''), or other pointing device. An example of point and cli ...
, with some
cut scene
A cutscene or event scene (sometimes in-game cinematic or in-game movie) is a sequence in a video game that is not interactive, interrupting the gameplay. Such scenes are used to show conversations between characters, set the mood, reward the ...
s. The player not only has to locate items but carefully choose dialog to gather information to help them progress through the game.
Characters in the game were
digitized
DigitizationTech Target. (2011, April). Definition: digitization. ''WhatIs.com''. Retrieved December 15, 2021, from https://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/digitization is the process of converting information into a digital (i.e. computer- ...
from
analog
Analog or analogue may refer to:
Computing and electronics
* Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable
** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals
*** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...
footage, allowing for real life characters to be placed in
2D digital environments.
Reception
Charles Ardai of ''
Computer Gaming World
''Computer Gaming World'' (CGW) was an American computer game magazine published between 1981 and 2006. One of the few magazines of the era to survive the video game crash of 1983, it was sold to Ziff Davis in 1993. It expanded greatly through ...
'', while approving of the game's visual style and detailed art, criticized that the game has a simplistic interface and uses juvenile shock value in the form of gratuitous violence and sexual content in order to distract from the lack of substance to the story. He added, "It's also highly derivative, both of actual comic books and of other computer games."
A reviewer for ''
Next Generation'' highly praised the game's story, abstract and challenging puzzles, comic-book style backgrounds, digitized character animation, soundtrack, and dark atmosphere. Though he remarked that some of the dialogue is silly for a
Mature-rated game, and that many of the puzzles require illogical leaps of intuition, he concluded that "Those not requiring the utmost in realism will find this to be one of the best graphic adventures of the season."
Legacy
In 2015
Night Dive Studios
Night Dive Studios, Inc. (doing business as Nightdive Studios) is an American video game developer based in Vancouver, Washington. The company was founded in November 2012 by Stephen and Alix Kick, former video game artists for Sony Online Ente ...
acquired the rights of the game and was able to recover the
source code
In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
from the original developer. The game's
assembly code
In computer programming, assembly language (or assembler language, or symbolic machine code), often referred to simply as Assembly and commonly abbreviated as ASM or asm, is any low-level programming language with a very strong correspondence b ...
was ported with the help of the original developer to
C++
C++ (pronounced "C plus plus") is a high-level general-purpose programming language created by Danish computer scientist Bjarne Stroustrup as an extension of the C programming language, or "C with Classes". The language has expanded significan ...
to port the game to modern platforms. On 3 September 2015, the ''Enhanced Edition'' was released on Steam, on 21 January 2016 followed a release on the
DRM-free
Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. ...
distributor
GOG.com
GOG.com (formerly Good Old Games) is a digital distribution platform for video games and films. It is operated by GOG sp. z o.o., a wholly owned subsidiary of CD Projekt based in Warsaw, Poland. GOG.com delivers DRM-free video games through it ...
. The remastered game features full compatibility with contemporary computers, a remastered soundtrack, improved keyboard/mouse support with rebindable keys/buttons and several
bug fix
A patch is a set of changes to a computer program or its supporting data designed to update, fix, or improve it. This includes fixing security vulnerabilities and other bugs, with such patches usually being called bugfixes or bug fixes. Patches ...
es, and removed dead-end situations that would render the game unwinnable. On 27 October 2017,
Linux
Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...
and
macOS
macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...
versions of the ''Enhanced Edition'' were released.
Gamers who
pirated
Copyright infringement (at times referred to as piracy) is the use of works protected by copyright without permission for a usage where such permission is required, thereby infringing certain exclusive rights granted to the copyright holder, s ...
a copy of this version of ''Noctropolis'' will see their character imprisoned on the
game over screen instead of the standard animations.
References
External links
*
''Noctropolis''at
GameFAQs
GameFAQs is a website that hosts FAQs and walkthroughs for video games. It was created in November 1995 by Jeff Veasey and was bought by CNET Networks in May 2003. It is currently owned by Fandom, Inc. since October 2022. The site has a databa ...
*{{IMDb title, 0184785
1994 video games
Adventure games
DOS games
Electronic Arts games
Full motion video based games
Horror video games
Linux games
MacOS games
Point-and-click adventure games
Single-player video games
Video games about vampires
Video games with digitized sprites
Weird fiction video games
Windows games
Works about comics
Video games developed in the United States