If you ever fancied yourself sharp enough to survive as a noir detective, Night Call might be the perfect July release for you. The game, coming to PC on July 17th, styles itself as a neo-noir set in Paris. It takes on the moody black-and-white color scheme that the genre entails, while also delivering a suspenseful mystery that will play out differently each playthrough. That's thanks to over 70 characters with different backstories that all have something to say, and each one can take a seat in the cab that you drive.
Life is very interesting for a cab driver. I say this as someone who spent all of one summer driving Lyft in Los Angeles, but it's true. You'd be surprised how many strangers feel comfortable gossiping about the sordid details of their lives while you sit just in front of them. You'd be even more surprised with how many of them actually turn to their driver and deliver all of this information directly. I can perfectly envision how the folks at Monkey Moon and Black Muffin incorporated the job into Night Call's mystery.
Night Call's Paris is decidedly more gritty than my bright and sometimes gaudy stretch of LA. It also happens to be under threat from a serial killer, and the police suspect you. You had the latest victim in your cab, which is pretty suspicious. The only away to avoid prison is to find the real killer.
Since you're a simple cab driver and not a detective, your resources are limited to whoever takes your cab on a given night. You have to use what you can, that is whatever they decide to tell you, as clues to pinpoint the killer. As you can imagine, that makes a lot of the game dialogue-focused as you try to ask the right questions in the time it takes to drive someone to their destination. Publisher Raw Fury says that there are 70+ possible passengers. This means that a character who ends up being the killer in one session might not even be there the next.
Overall it measures up to what could be a tense, fun time. Like many games that attempt a roguelike mystery, its success will come down to just how varied the game can really get. July 17th is only a few weeks away, so we won't need to wait long to find out.