Noctropolis

Noctropolis

You are Darksheer, and your nemeses will stop at nothing: the vampiric Succubus, Tophat the Magician, the masochistic Master Macabre and their demonic allies have joined forces to indulge in fantasies of carnage worthy only of the end of time.
 PC

Overview

Noctropolis is an adventure game developed by Flashpoint Productions and published by Electronic Arts for PC.

On September 3rd, 2015 the game was re-released as an enhanced edition to work on modern consoles by Nightdive Studios.

On January 21st, 2016 the enhanced edition was released on GOG.com.

A standard adventure game as far as using standard adventure commands, it was rated Mature 17 due to a brief scene of Stiletto topless and a few other violent scenes. Noctropolis is one of the earliest games to use real actors digitized and placed in the game.

Story

Players take control of Peter Gray, a bookstore owner, who is rather down on his luck. He happens to be a huge fan of the Darksheer comic and to make his life even worse, finds out that his favorite hero is retiring. Fortunatley, his luck changes a bit and he finds out he won a Darksheer sweepstakes. The prize is an unreleased comic that tells of how a new villain, Flux, has started breaking Darksheer's enemies out of prison. Included with the comic are two coins and upon playing around with one of them Peter is sucked into some sort of vortex.

Upon waking up Peter finds himself in Noctropolis itself. With no other options, Peter desides to become the new Darksheer and bring all the villains to justice and add some meaning to his life.

Characters

  • Darksheer - The hero of Noctropolis. After a close encounter with death and a falling out from his sidekick, he retires.
  • Stiletto - Darksheer's sidekick and love rumored love interest. She disappeared shortly after Darksheer's retirement.
  • Flux - A new villain on the streets of Noctropolis. Responsible for breaking out many of Darksheer's enemies from prison.
  • Greenthumb - A notorious criminal who uses mutant plants in his nefarious deeds.
  • Master Macarbre - Once a skilled surgeon, he now only uses his skills to torture and mutilate.
  • Succubus - A demon who possesses the body of a young woman.
  • Top Hat - A magician who uses his talents for evil and is a renowned escape artist.

Controls

The game uses rather standard adventure game commands from the time along with a point and click interface. Commands such as Open, Get and Talk are all accessed via a graphical interface that appears when right-clicking the mouse.

Critical Reception

PC Gamer magazine gave the game an 82 with the blurb, "Gorgeous VGA graphics and challenging but fair puzzles. The dialogue could have used another pass through the typewriter, and the acting is strictly amateur. Noctropolis is a solid adventure set in an intriguing and visually stunning world."