Restless Night Review

Publisher = ChiliDog Interactive
Developer = HugePixel
Release date = 16th July 2021
Genre = Shoot ‘em up, and twin stick shooter
Platforms = Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch
Price = £4.19
Difficulty = 5/10 (without cheats)
Completion difficulty = 1/10 (with cheats)
Completion time = 1-2 hours (with cheats)

Summary.

Restless Night is a retro shoot ‘em up, which takes inspiration from an arcade style. This game is a tactically approached and challenging shoot ‘em up frenzy, which is jam packed with nostalgic visuals and beautiful music. Restless Night offers the playable character another life, but only if you overcome all the enemies in the land of the dead. You’ll use all sorts of power ups and weapons to help defeat the enemies. Each murderous monster will attack you differently. Be prepared to adapt your strategy to overcome different enemy types. While playing you’ll encounter charming visuals and beautiful music. The visuals and music help set the tone for Restless Night. The music is mysterious and creates dread while the visuals create detailed horrifying creatures for you to defeat. When you combine all the pieces of Restless Night you get a fantastic game.

Gameplay, Visuals, Sound, and Animations.

Gameplay 8/10

Restless night has twin stick shooter controls that you use to shoot hordes of enemies whilst you immerse yourself in this challenging but satisfying shoot ‘em up. Restless Night intends to challenge you immensely in your playthrough. However, the challenging gameplay goes well with the retro theme of the nostalgic consoles of the past. Fortunately, you’re not alone in the fight against tons of brilliantly designed enemies: collect speed power ups to escape deadly foes before they overwhelm you, collect defence power ups to cling onto life in tense scenarios, collect boom power ups to obliterate all enemies on the map, and collect health power ups to avoid imminent death. All the available power ups help in different situations but collecting them will risk enemies swarming and murdering you. Many foes exist in Restless Night, and each behaves differently from the last. You’ll have to battle both melee, and long-range enemies. You’ll be forced to overcome monstrous creatures and murder the cruel merciless bosses. However, to aid you on your unforgiving quest you have different weapons: the shotgun fires multiple strong bullets for close range, the laser provides a quick way to eliminate enemies far away at the cost of accuracy, and the rifle is a good middle range weapon. Restless Night provides tons of exhilarating tools, but can you strategically use them to survive?

Visuals 7/10

Restless Night is very old school when it comes to visuals. Inspired by past consoles and arcades it gives a simplistic but charming look. The visuals give a retro arcade-era atmosphere to the game. Restless Night’s visuals combine brilliantly with the game's gameplay. For example, enemies are simple pixelated creatures that are easy to shoot with the top-down view. The visuals were clearly cared for as plenty of little details are hidden throughout the game: red blood stains cover the screen after an enemy has died, Each enemy has a different colour blood, and bosses have unique and intricate designs.

Animations 7/10

The animations are smooth and satisfying to watch in Restless Night. You and the enemies all have amazing animations, which are elegant and reflexes the gameplay: bullets fly smoothly across the screen, each enemy has a unique running animation and speed, and dying enemies either explode into a pile of blood or fall off the screen. The animations are full to the brim with beautiful explosions and seamless movement.

My Thoughts.

Restless Night is a challenging yet enjoyable game to play. Each enemy you face will have to be battled in a strategic way to avoid death. This means to survive the hordes of dangerous creatures coming towards you, you’ll have to be strategic. Restless Night feels overwhelmingly rewarding after learning survival tactics to help aid you reach a checkpoint. The game boasts many weapons, enemies, and power ups for you to create tactics with. Restless Night is at its best when you use your resources to survive. For example, in my playthrough, on level 15, the boss sent projectiles everywhere, and I had to choose if I wanted to risk collecting a nearby health pack or keep shooting the close to death boss. Nothing is more rewarding than the pride you get after completing a challenging level. Making strategies in Restless Night is pure fun, and the game promotes trial and error over frustration, which is why I had so much fun playing Restless Night.

The visuals are fantastic, and they create a retro arcade-era feeling to the game. I loved the visuals, and I felt they really went well with the gameplay and animations of Restless Night. Each enemy has a unique pixelated design, which when defeated would explode leaving a blood stain on the ground. The main reason I find that the visuals are so good is because you can see everything: enemies that you shot exploding, power ups spawning in, pixelated enemies swarming around you. The top down view allows you to see what's happening. Since the visuals are arcade-like they are simplistic enough to be charming and undistracting.

The animations are amazing and add a feeling of satisfaction to your character's actions. I enjoyed the animations because both the enemies and your actions happened seamlessly. Enemies falling or exploding on my screen when dying felt rewarding. Often enemies would swarm me, and I’d have to strategically eliminate them all. Watching your strategy work as enemies fly and explode around you is a blast. The animations are beautifully animated and are flashy and vibrant enough to allow you to recognise what's happening. For example, bullets are easy to spot and smoothly travel allowing for an opening for you to escape death. The animations were a rewarding treat to watch after enemies perished, and they made the gameplay seamless.

The music creates an ominous feeling, which creates dread and urgency. While playing Restless Night I always kept moving around as enemies are fast and the music reflects this. I constantly felt the need to be quick as one wrong move and death would be in pursuit. Enemies will growl and cry as you attack them. This made me feel more tense as the threat often felt overwhelming. However, if you're persistent you’ll be rewarded.

Completion.

Chilidog Interactive has published another fantastically fun completion. Restless Night is an extremely easy and relaxing 1000 Gamerscore with cheats. Cheats will make you invincible from all damage. Your playthrough of this game will be stress-free and you can simply enjoy the beautiful music and arcade like visuals. Restless Night requires no skill and should take you 1-2 hours. The achievements task you to die 9 times, beat all 30 levels of story mode, survive 10 minutes in arcade mode, and collect 30 of each power up.

Chilidog Interactive has created an amazing gesture to the achievement hunting community by naming 50 achievements after achievement hunters. On Twitter the publisher of Restless Night did a competition to become an achievement in Restless Night. By commenting on the tweet, 50 people were chosen to become an achievement. Everyone else was added to the credits of the game. I even got my own achievement called ‘This one is for Stealth_Troy.’ This was a nice thing for Chilidog Interactive to do for the achievement community.

Conclusion.

Restless Night is a shoot ‘em up that relies on the player making strategies to overcome hordes of enemies. This game offers a vast range of weapons and power ups to aid you but collecting them could be risky. Each enemy is unique and should be dealt with differently. For example, some enemies can fly over buildings, but others will have to walk around. To survive you’ll have to safely make use of the power ups and weapons Restless Night offers. The visuals create an arcade-era feeling that combines well with the game’s gameplay. Restless Night uses a top-down view, which oversees all the gameplay. This view allows you to see all the beautiful visuals and animations play out. Animations happen seamlessly and they are astonishing as you can see the pixelated movement being responsive and smooth. The music reflexes the gameplay of Restless Night by giving the player a grim feeling. When making decisions in the game you’ll have to be fast to survive. The music relates to this with its scary tone. Restless Night is an extremely easy completion with the use of cheat codes. I’d recommend Restless Night to anyone who enjoys arcade-era retro video games.

Restless Night final score = 79/100
A strategic and challenging shoot ‘em up blast, which is jammed packed with nostalgia.


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Restless Night purchase links.
Buy Restless Night for Xbox.
Buy Restless Night for PlayStation.
Buy Restless Night for Steam.
Buy Restless Night for Nintendo Switch.