Nocturne in Yellow is a free First Person Shooter in where you play as a librarian that came across a book warning about a great evil that’s about to awaken. In this world everyone is at war with each other and none takes the time to listen to the seemingly crazy librarian ranting about the end of days. Left with no other, choice the cowardly man goes to face the prophesized evil by himself wielding nothing but a bow and a spear his family had in the attic. Upon reaching the island, he sees first hand that the dead now roam freely and the warnings the book spoke of are indeed true. From then on out there is quite a bit of story text to read in before bosses or at the beginning of levels if you chose Story Mode instead of the Arcade Mode that has you play through the levels without having gameplay interrupted by text. The story they tell is kind of interesting though nothing to write home about so either mode is viable depending on your preferences.
The first enemies you will run across on that island are zombies who are about as threatening as old people crossing the street. They are the only enemy where using your spear against is viable and you can mow down hordes of them in satisfying fashion. Soon after you will come across projectile throwing spiders and since it is a 2.5D game built on the Doom engine enemies will always be facing you meaning you can’t flank them with your spear making that weapon neigh useless against most enemies. Your primary weapon throughout your adventure will be your bow and arrow that has extremely good range as well as pinpoint precision. You will be needing very good aim in this game as most enemies move both extremely fast and unnaturally jittery. While it does create a sense of these creatures being unnatural monstrosities it also does make them rather hard to hit as most also have small hitboxes. This is definitely one title where you will be needing skill to so much as hit most of the enemies. It does take a few seconds before you are able to fire off another arrow so blindly firing will more likely than not be the end of you.
As a small warning for those that decide to give this title a shot you are supposed to lose against first boss fight so don’t waste a ton of your time fighting for an unattainable victory. After finishing a boss fight at the end of a level you are given an artifact that modifies your bow to have extraordinary powers such as homing arrows or a deadly scattershot one for close range. These come at the cost of mana however which is indicated in the upper right purple bar and once it’s empty you can no longer use any artifact. To refill this bar you collect purple floating sigils scattered around the levels while floating red orbs will restore some health. All artifacts only affect your bow making the spear even more useless sadly enough. Equipping different artifacts is pretty hard to do in the heat of battle as you have to scroll through them with the “E” key, select it and then active it with the “Z” key. It is a lot easier to just learn what hotkey they are bound to so you can have them ready to go with a single button press. You will want to look through the control bindings since they are a bit unusual and the activate key is “C” for instance. While you are in the menus you may want to go into the audio menu and turn “Sounds” way down since the footsteps are way too loud in this game and will drive you mad.
My first few steps into the game I was wondering what was that god awful noise that sounded like someone was digging something up rather violently but it turns out it was our character having the noisiest footsteps in existence. He can seriously not be any louder and if I was dead I would also be going after him just to shut him up. Turning the sounds bar as down as it goes without completely turning it off resolves this issue but his death cries are still way too loud and made me grateful I wasn’t playing this with headphones. Music is not that great either and the whole audio spectrum in this game is less than great to be honest. Graphics are from an engine that is decades old and with that in mind they look rather nice with rain pouring from the sky and onto a land full of dead trees. Plenty of nice color effects indoors too. Not something that will impress those not familiar with Doom though it certainly does a good job of having a distinct look and good level design. You will usually have to find three colored keycards but the levels themselves are pretty linear making near impossible to be stuck in a level.
Where this game shines is in its gameplay. It is just a lot of fun zooming past a ton of enemy projectiles and picking them off with well-placed shots. If you are ever overwhelmed you also have quite a few grenades at your disposal that are great for clearing mobs which also take skill to use since they can bounce off a wall and right back into your face. Eventually you will get a new weapon in the form of a rifle and it packs quite a punch though ammo is rare and it takes a while to reload which is less than ideal when up against multiple enemies. All enemies are pretty creepy and the most memorable of them all is some manner of walking squid creature that makes a noise that will send shivers down your spine. Your character also has the ability to sprint but after the first few levels it is pretty much useless since the areas become much smaller and you move rather fast as is. That sudden change to small rooms really does not suit this style of projectile filled gameplay and while rarely too small to dodge what is thrown at you I did find myself wishing for the return of the larger areas of the first levels. Overall there are 7 levels in total and they are all rather lengthy, taking up to 2 hours to complete the game.
Scarcely placed around the levels are ominous looking statues that will save your game. These are very few and far between which would have been an annoyance if the game didn’t also have a quick save feature allowing you to save whenever you please. Boss fights are unfortunately the low point of the game. While they do have interesting things to say before battle they are just far too bullet spongy and with no health meter or indication that they are even taking damage can feel like they last an eternity. These fights are also where the small environments become noticeable as bosses will cover the area in tons of projectiles and in the fight against a certain wizard, the room will be too covered in flames to even move out of the way. The last boss fight also glitched out on me twice causing me to revert to an old save for another go. One of the most memorable boss fights was an invisible specter who you can only locate through the sound of its heartbeat. It is unfortunately made annoying by how much damage it soaks up and time it takes to defeat it. Some manner of health bar would have gone a long way as the bosses have so much health that during fights I was starting to wonder if I’m doing something wrong or if they are even being damaged.
The 6th level has a platforming sequence that is very easy to fail and the 7th level mistakes having your game look glitchy as making it look surreal or otherworldly. Funnily enough the 7th level already managed to look surreal and otherworldly so glitching it out was completely unneeded. I criticized this game quite a bit these past few paragraphs but do keep in mind that this is a free game. Even if it has its flaws I never once considered quitting until I defeated whatever evil awaited me in this island. There is just something no enjoyable as playing as a mixture of both Robin Hood and Neo from the Matrix, hunting down the undead. You have unlimited arrows so even if you have terrible aim you don’t have to worry about your ammo supplies, just an angry demonic creature trying to take a bite out of your throat. If you like FPS games and have some free time to kill this would make a good 2 hour distraction that will run on pretty much any PC.
Download Nocturne in Yellow here
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