After completing work on Jazz and Faust, developer Saturn+ is hard at work on Midnight Nowhere, an adventure with a horror slant. The game begins with an admittedly clichéd situation: our protagonist awakens in a morgue within a hospital, with no recollection of who he is or how he got there (shades of Planescape: Torment, I reckon). After finding his way out of the morgue, he discovers that a simple case of amnesia isn’t the only problem—the hospital is littered with the corpses of the building's personnel, dead by causes unknown. Our protagonist will have to explore the confines of the building (among other places—the game later expands beyond the hospital), and seek the aid of its inhabitants, in order to make sense of his situation.

In the graphics department, Midnight Nowhere utilizes 3D characters over highly detailed pre-rendered backgrounds, and cinematic cutscenes to progress elements of the story. In order to add life to the game’s scenes, Saturn+ has made sure that many backgrounds are not completely static: lights flicker, cold air billows out from within the morgue’s coolers, and ventilation fans rotate.

Played from the third-person perspective, the game makes use of a traditional point & click interface. Multiple cursor types, which can be selected via a menu at the top of the screen, allow you to pickup or examine items, and speak with other characters. Not much is known about Midnight Nowhere’s puzzles, but expect to see your standard dialog and inventory-based brain teasers. One thing of note is the developer’s choice to avoid the traditional “hot spots” found in other games when your mouse cursor moves over something that can be picked up or manipulated. Saturn+ believes that this will add a welcome challenge to their game, but it could easily end up backfiring and devolve gameplay into one big pixel hunt if puzzle solutions become too illogical, or inventory items are difficult to make out over the pre-rendered scenery.

Atmospherically, this should be an understandably dark experience, although the developers promise our unnamed hero will have a great sense of humour, and will be ready to throw in a good quip or two if times become a little too difficult.

To see real-time footage of the game, check out the gameplay trailer available at 3DGamers. Look for Midnight Nowhere, published by Buka Entertainment, in the first quarter of next year.