Next Stop Nowhere (2020)

Usually the Backbone One improves gameplay, but Night School hasn’t done the best job optimizing this game for controller input. Analogue sensitivity is far too high and navigating the ship through obstacles is much harder using a controller than via touch control. Also I keep experiencing an issue where pressing the interaction button while on the ship simultaneously launches one of the game’s two main in-game menus. It gets frustrating when I’m just trying to interact with doors or other items on the ship.

Character writing in Next Stop Nowhere feels like a step down in quality from Oxenfree and Afterparty. Although Night School often leans on sarcastic humour, this game seems only to contain sarcasm. Think Afterparty with no chill. I hope that changes because I usually enjoy their writing. I’m still early in the game so there’s room for tonal shifts, if any are planned.

Next Stop Nowhere is a short and sweet space roaming romp. Not filled with much gameplay. A few space lights of dodging debris as to not destroy your ship and some simple puzzles to get through. Story takes center stage. And while it isn’t some mind blowing story it’s fun to go through. The stellar voice acting and the fun characters make this worth the 3 hour trip it takes to get through the game. You get to make choices, as with most of these types of games and the lighthearted tone of the game made some of the choices even more fun to do.

The glitches were a bit frustrating though as I went through the story. Multiple times I had to exit to the main menu to then go through some story beats again to get my ship to accept my input. And there is some pop in and out and other graphical hiccups that were minor annoyances. The restarting thing was pretty dumb though. Not a fan.

Overall a decent experience. If you need a short gap game you could certainly do worse.