Shift At Midnight: an elevated retail experience
By Cole Johnson
Copy Editor
A middle-aged bank teller approaches the register in your dingy store. You scan her ID, ask her birthday. You know, the usual stuff. She tells you it’s March 8, 1955, warmly remarking, “Such a lovely spring birthday!” The date checks out with the database, though she looks a tad older than 38. You bag her purchases, and just as you’re about to bid her goodbye, it hits you - March 8 isn’t in the spring. Without further conversation, you pull a handgun from under the register and send her corporeal form flying into chunks, spattering blood over the tile floor and sunglasses stand. Your coworker doesn’t blink. “I’ll get the mop.” Developed by Ben Muen, Shift At Midnight is a multiplayer horror game that tasks players with operating a convenience store for 13 nights. Thrilling, I know, but the real meat of the game is the customers. In addition to stocking, cleaning, and decorating the store, you must evaluate each buyer to discern whether they are human or a doppelganger, an impersonation piloted by a foreign entity at odds with humanity. Doppelgangers look human, but there’s some inconsistency in their appearance or story. Naturally, you as a minimum-wage employee are a vital line of defense against this world-endangering threat. Discrepancies start out obvious. A woman whose profile says she has a “scar on her face” has no skin on her head. An ancient lady claims to be born in 1990 - in a game set in 1993. If you confront her about it, she’ll sweetly reply, “Yes, dear, 3 years old and counting.” As the game progresses, however, clues become subtler. A customer’s ID or appearance could turn up nothing, but you might find evidence against them by looking up the details of a claimed relative or searching their car. Additional means emerge over time for fact-checking. A daily news bulletin informs you of ongoing events that may contradict your customer’s stories. The register occasionally gains a new device to scan appearances and emotions. Ironically, the wider range of information makes it more likely for something to slip through the cracks of your investigation. The late game pulls some evil tricks on you, gaslighting you into scrutinizing every banal minutia. You can get so obsessed with the clues you’re missing, you’ll end up blowing away a perfectly innocent person after gleaning a non-existent meaning from a passing detail - yes, that poor lady was just using a general term indicating a birthday any time from March through May. I’m going to hell. The burden is somewhat alleviated by having friends on shift. You often find yourself tailing a doppelganger into the street after your coworkers catch something you missed. The game has you in a balancing act between safety and profit. You’re penalized for escaped doppelgangers or killed humans, and you want to complete as many purchases as possible to satisfy your employer and buy medication for your sick pet you adopt at the start of the game. Occasionally, your pet attends your shift, patrolling the store and gobbling up the remains of dispatched doppelgangers. At least it’s easier than using garbage bags. Each shift ends with bated breath. If any doppelgangers completed a transaction, the lights shut off and the store interior glows blood red. Prepare for an entity attack. You have a minute to lay traps and board the doors before a fleshy spider-like being enters and begins stalking the aisles. Either wait it out or gun it down until it leaves to survive the night. After the night ends, you’re presented with a list of the day’s customers, revealing them as human or doppelgangers. The list actually specifies the incriminating attributes of each doppelganger, which I have mixed feelings about. Being told exactly what you missed hurts the game’s replayability, but it also gradually trains you to more thoroughly assess future customers, which makes it feel more rewarding to catch impostors with increasingly scant information. The combination of poor graphics, janky animations and absurd dialogue result in a game that is often more silly than it is scary. Horror isn’t really the main appeal here, but the chaos that ensues as the game unfolds is entirely intended and welcome. Rating: B+ No one will believe you.
