I pride myself on finding games that do something different. A gameplay mechanic, a setting, a story, a perspective, or a mood. It’s what draws me to indie games, as they can be unfiltered and imperfect. Nightsoil is a game that is unlike anything else I’ve played in recent memory. It is an imperfect, obtuse, and at times frustrating experience, but that’s also part of the point. It’s a game that sells an oppressive atmosphere with an end-as-we-know-it overtone. It’s also a game that roughly depicts a bond between man and horse in a clever way.
Nightsoil puts the player back in 1854. We are an old gong farmer, and London is riddled with cholera. The streets have swarms of rats and rage-filled or confused homeless people in them, but London is largely empty, desolate, and broken. A madness and overwhelming panic have set in, as disease takes over. What does an old gong farmer do? They clean out all the outdoor toilets and sewers of poo. The game takes place over your last shift of quite literally shovelling shit in an attempt to keep London a little cleaner and less disease-ridden for one more night. To help you, you’ll be riding ‘Ol Boy, your long-standing horse, around the map of London to clean sewers, privies, and other disgusting areas. This isn’t a game for those who don’t like bodily functions!
The game has a couple of interlinked mechanics. The first is shovelling shit. You’ll collect your bucket and shovel from your cart and wander off to various locations down alleyways or manhole covers to collect your fresh dung. Shovelling is a simple button press, but as the game progresses, sewers become more maze-like and complex to navigate. This brings two problems. Firstly, the fumes and disease reduce your own health meter, and if you don’t reach fresh air quickly enough, you’ll collapse and lose progress. Secondly, as all these locations are down alleys or manholes, you’ll have to leave your trusty horse on the roadside. As soon as you step away, ‘Ol Boy’s comfort meter starts to reduce. The lower it gets, the more agitated the horse becomes, and it will start to get spooked. If you catch him during this phase, you’ll enter a rock-paper-scissors type of minigame to calm your steed down. If you get the minigame wrong repeatedly, ‘Ol Boy’s heart will race towards a heart attack, and he’ll collapse and die. The horse can also just startle when it’s uncomfortable and bolt off out of control to a different part of the map. You’ll need to track him down, calm him, and get him back to where you need him. You can prevent or mitigate some of these incidents with regular pets, straw feeds, and water stops, but fair warning… this horse is thirsty! You’ll be making trips to wells to fill up the water bucket often!
Whilst I commend Nightsoil for its oppressive, overwhelmingly depressive and moody atmosphere, the controls of ‘Ol Boy are an artistic choice I’m less keen on. Using WASD to control the horse, it’s a bit like controlling Lara Croft using tank controls from the original Tomb Raider games. The problem is that all the London streets are narrow, and you’ve also got a massive cart behind you. There’s no such thing as a three-point turn. It’s more like a twenty-point turn, and it gets annoying quite quickly. If the controls were a little less wooden, it’d make Nightsoil a more enjoyable game to play, and it’d carve a good half hour off the runtime! This is a 3-hour story, but that’s because you’ll have to stop tasks mid-way to fetch water, pet the horse, or get clean air before resuming. It’s like a very slow Victorian toilet-based juggling act, and whilst it’s unusual, it feels like the experience is padded out in slightly the wrong manner. I’d have preferred a bit more story, and more horse and human bonding than meter management.
However, if you are looking for original and unique experiences, Nightsoil is certainly one of them. Avoiding death by poo or plague is a strange slog, but it was also quite compelling, too. This is a niche slow-burner that puts its atmosphere first, and player comfort a very distant second. Whilst I may not have agreed with all the design decisions around that, I completely respect its angular, awkward, and defeated tone. One for us weirdos!
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