Nocturne is a 1999 action-adventure survival horror video game set in the late 1920s and early 1930s – the Prohibition and Great Depression era. The player takes the part of The Stranger (voiced by Lynn Mathis), an operative of a fictional American Government secret organization known as "Spookhouse", which was created by President Theodore Roosevelt to fight monsters. He investigates four strange cases and saves people from classic monsters such as werewolves, zombies, and vampires.
Gameplay
Nocturne is a survival horror video game. It features pre-rendered backgrounds superimposed with real-time 3D characters. According to Terminal Reality president Mark Randel, Nocturne is the first game with volumetric lighting and fogging.
Reception
The game received favorable reviews according to the review aggregation website GameRankings. GameZone gave it 8.3 out of 10. Benjamin E. Sones of Computer Games Strategy Plus gave it four stars out of five, saying: "If you have the hardware to run it, Nocturne is an intensely unique and visually beautiful game that will draw you in and keep you coming back for more in spite of its shortcomings. Just make sure you play it at night, and keep a few sharpened stakes close at hand..." However, Jeff Lundrigan of NextGen gave it a negative review, calling the game as not terrible, but not terrifying either. It won the 1999 "Adventure Game of the Year" prize from GameSpy, whose staff called it "the best adventure game [...] in a long time". It was also a runner-up for the "Best Graphics, Technical Excellence" award at GameSpots Best & Worst of 1999 Awards, which went to Quake III Arena. The game was a runner-up for the "Best Sound" award at PC Accelerators 2nd Annual PCXL Awards, while "The Stranger" won the Best Actor award. It won the award for "Coaster of the Year" Computer Gaming Worlds 2000 Hall of Shame.
The game sold 109,000 units in the U.S. by October 2001.
Sequel
There is a partial sequel to Nocturne – a crossover between the Nocturne universe and The Blair Witch Project. The game, Blair Witch Volume I: Rustin Parr, is the first of a trilogy of Blair Witch games published by Gathering of Developers. The game stars the Spookhouse agent Elspeth "Doc" Holliday, who investigates the legend of the Blair Witch. The story's background involves an old hermit named Rustin Parr, who killed seven children in Burkittsville, claiming that he was doing it for an "old woman ghost". Spookhouse becomes interested in the case, and Doc is sent to investigate. The game was developed by Terminal Reality and uses the Nocturne Engine. Some other agents from Nocturne appear in the game. However, neither of the two following volumes in the series made any mention to the Spookhouse; although Elspeth and Volume III's protagonist meet during a temporal breach in Volume I, the scene is not present in Volume III. Both Volume II and III also use the Nocturne Engine.
Nocturne was heavily influential in the creation of Terminal Reality's BloodRayne game. The first BloodRayne game's working title was Nocturne 2, and it contains several references to Nocturne, including several levels that take place in the German castle from Nocturnes Act I. Nocturne 2 was not greenlit by Gathering of Developers, who went defunct soon after, and the developers, unwilling to share the Nocturne license with a new publisher they did not trust yet, decided to create a new franchise which "give[s] familiar nods to the Nocturne fans". The main protagonist of BloodRayne, the dhampir Rayne, is based upon the Nocturne character Svetlana Lupescu. Rayne's costume in the beta version even suggests she was originally supposed to be Svetlana. The "holy grail of the Vampires", the magical stone that can render a vampire invulnerable to most things that should normally harm him from Nocturnes Act I, is the heart of Beliar in BloodRayne.
The name Nocturne for use in video games remained under trademark, forcing Atlus to license it when releasing Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne in North America, and for Ghostlight to change the subtitle to Lucifer's Call.