I should say this up front: I don’t really get Midnight Moments. I don’t mean that as a criticism. It’s very much ‘not you, it’s me’. I’m the kind of guy that likes a defined start and end point to constructive things. When I’m building LEGO, I enjoy following the instructions. When presented with a big box of random pieces, my mind tends to go blank. Whatever I put together, it doesn’t feel right and the whole thing falls apart. So Midnight Moments is very specifically not made for me. Which is fine, of course, but if there is an undercurrent of bemusement running through this review, you now know why.
However, I’m a professional (sort of), so I tried to meet it halfway. I thought up a few projects I wanted to build and set about it. The end result was a mixed bag. There were moments where my vision started to come to life in front of me, and moments where either the game or my imagination fell short. As it turns out, I’m not great at city planning. Still, Midnight Moments does achieve its goal of giving you a breather from the fast pace of life, but I think it could take things a bit further in that direction.
City Of Neon
So, with that out of the way, what is Midnight Moments? Essentially, it’s a way of creating Cyberpunk dioramas. You start with a small square of land and you need to build it up, brick-by-brick into a little slice of life. Of course, because it’s Cyberpunk, everything must be in neon and it must always be raining. Bearing in mind that it’s Cyberpunk, I wanted my first build to immediately represent a class divide. A big glitzy, neon high-street on one side and a run-down slum behind it. Corporatism sucking the life out of the city populace seems on brand. The end result wasn’t too bad. Midnight Moments puts a lot of emphasis on things like lighting, which really helped the diorama pop. The driving rain going past the neon lights was somewhat mesmerising.
Midnight Moments makes it easy to build too. There’s no tutorial, which threw me a little at first, but as soon you start plonking things down, it falls into place. You start by placing down the big bricks. This’ll be the foundations of your building(s). Then you start filling in the floor, then the other details. So I laid down my buildings, laid down the road, and plotted out the slums in the background. Then I added lights, objects, environmental details (like graffiti) and, finally, people. It was fun seeing it all come together and, I will admit, there was a moment of satisfaction once it was done. The problem was with what came next, but we’ll get to that.
Building Up
My second project was going to focus on one building. I wanted to build a big skyscraper, but take off one wall to show the inside. It was to have a security checkpoint at reception, an office space, a security room, engineer room and penthouse. I only got as far as the security room, sadly, as there’s a limit to how tall you can build. Regardless, it did highlight that the objects in Midnight Moments are quite limited. In some cases, this prompts innovation. I cobbled together desks from an upside down balcony and two types of window. It looked reasonably like a future desk and I was quite proud. So Midnight Moments is good at slotting things together, it just needs more. My three builds ended up looking quite similar, because there was a limit to what I could plonk down.
Take my third build, which was supposed to be a gritty back alley behind a load of corporate buildings. I wanted it to be a grimy place for those that don’t have the disposable cash to fit in with the corporate crowd. In practice, though, I couldn’t add much there. Couldn’t even put in a barrel fire. Admittedly these are specific cases, but honestly the amount of objects is a little limited. I can’t imagine much differentiation between builds. While we’re on the complain train, I wish these dioramas did something. Even if it was just giving the people a small walking route. As it is, once built you can just sort of rotate around them and nothing else. Nice for screenshots, but it never stopped feeling artificial to me. Once done, the question that echoed was ‘Okay, now what?’
Midnight Moments – Pretty But Limited
Again, that may be on me. I can see the appeal in theory. It’s a similar sort of appeal as games like SimCity. Zooming in and watching your meticulously built city just go about its business. The difference here is that it doesn’t go about its business. Other than idle animations, it’s static. I didn’t feel any real pull to go back to my builds, as the entertainment for me was in the building, not the end result. Which is fine, I feel the same way about most constructive projects, but it needs more content to really keep things feeling original. If nothing else, it could do with a bigger play area. Oh, and I wish the camera would let us pan up and down. That made building my failed skyscraper a bit more painful.
Still, it holds up when you compare it again to LEGO. I’ve built a fair few LEGO projects and while they don’t do much more than sit on a shelf, they were still worth it. Putting together my first build in Midnight Moments felt good when everything started falling into place. Midnight Moments makes the act of building things feel natural, and lets your imagination fill in the gaps. My only real problem is that it seems to ask for more than it gives. That sort of thing can be fixed with content down the line or, even better, by opening up the Steam workshop. Otherwise, if you’re the type of person that likes building up dioramas from the bottom to the top, then it’ll probably appeal more to you than to me.
