Night Shift Review (PC)

“Who on earth orders a pizza at four o’clock in the morning?” I asked, knowing that it wasn’t a customer who I was speaking to, but the sniggering entity who perched beside me in the darkest corner of the room. “I’ll do it, not because I want to, or even because I want to keep a good job and earn a paycheck — but because I’d so rather subject myself to anything than have to look you dead in the eye.” I checked the clock again, fully expecting it to be a quarter past the hour, but to my surprise, time hadn’t moved, and the Night Shift was still in its infancy. I had more pizzas to cook, more customers to serve, and another several hours of avoiding eye contact with the crawling demon that was waiting for me to make just one small slip up so it could consume me.

It was never about making a dime; it was about proving that I could work under pressure — that I could avoid distractions and deliver a solid product without succumbing to the irrational fear of being alone in the dead of night. The job? Well, that was the easy part, as it more or less consisted of adding the appropriate toppings to pizza bases, and carrying out other generic duties, like rearranging chairs and taking out the trash, for example. That, in all honesty, wasn’t the issue that I had with Night Shift. Rather, it was the goal of having to keep my peripheral vision intact, or better yet, the trickery that would keep me on my toes for all the while I would actively choose to neglect the fly on the wall. That, was where I struggled to make ends meet in Night Shift.

The Eleventh Hour

Night Shift keeps to a similar pattern of events as the likes of Happy Humble’s Burger Farm, or The Boba Teashop, with the protagonist, or unfortunate soul who has, rather distastefully, wound up working the graveyard shift at some ominous-looking husk for a restaurant on the wrong end of town. It begins in a similar fashion, too, with the game making a proposal, of sorts—an exclusive offer that, if accepted, would involve you, along with whatever events that may or may not take place over the course of the shift, signing the dotted line of a three-day stint in a restaurant.

The idea here is pretty straightforward: embark on a short journey through a three-day pizza-making expedition, and do all in your power to avoid the monstrosities that loom between the nooks and crannies of the restaurant. Like HHBF, your job is to rustle up quick meals for customers, keep track of time as it gradually ushers in a new dawn, and execute relatively dull tasks, like taking out the trash in a timely manner. With all of this is one enormous caveat: the more you do, the more likely you are to bump into one of the several demonic creatures that flesh out the restaurant. In case like that, you either have to run, avoid its path, or refrain from letting your eyes gaze upon it for extended periods of time. Well, at least that’s what I took away from it.

A Slice of Paranoia

Night Shift comes equipped with one goal and one goal only: to isolate you from others, and to make you feel utterly helpless and vulnerable—paranoid, being the most fitting word here. And that’s where the game’s primary calling card comes into play—a USP that comes shackled to a familiar yet homely aid of a grainy PSX visual palette and a densely textured style. Visually, it doesn’t do itself any favors — at least not by modern standards, anyway. But that isn’t what Night Shift strives to encompass; it’s a signature feel that fans of heyday console horror can both appreciate and reflect upon. It does that well, too, with thanks to its intentionally shoddy audiovisual aspects and erratic, almost nonsensical AI implementations.

Of course, Night Shift isn’t in receipt of any major post-completion secrets or bonus campaign promises, as reflected in its bite-sized three-day story mode. Yet, there is one worthy silver lining to its lack of vigor and longevity, and that’s the fact that it makes each new slip into its world distinctively unique, with its AI and creatures making commendable efforts to pose new threats and challenges for you to overcome whilst you hobble around hacking up dough balls and what have you. It’s a small thing, but it adds replay value, which is a huge benefit unto itself, for sure.

Verdict

Night Shift bathes in that same PSX excellence that helped to shape countless palate-cleaning horrors and indie jewels from back in the early days of console gaming. It doesn’t do anything majorly exciting to shake up the existing formula, though it does manage to capture the essence of a golden age of innovation with its intentionally limited scope, design choices, and liminal mechanics. As for whether or not it’s the better choice of the two, three, or seventy-six other PSX-inspired indie horrors on the market is another question, and one that is bound to drive a wedge between multiple fan bases across a spectrum of platforms.

To make it that much easier for you to decide, you ought to give the likes of The Boba Teashop a brief visit before figuring out whether or not Night Shift has enough caloric value to satisfy your hunger. And even then, given that it’s currently available for a couple of bucks or so, it’s not as if you’ll be burning a hole in your pocket to sample its contents.

If it’s a quick romp through the pizza oven that you’re hungering for, as well as an hour-long bout of sheer anxiety and paranoia, then you could certainly do a whole lot worse than Night Shift. It might not fill a hole in the pit of your stomach, but it ought to do a good job of cleansing your palate whilst you wait for the next course elsewhere.