One Night Stand

Genre: Visual Novel

Players: 1

.

Review:

One Night Stand is a Visual Novel released on PC in 2016 and ported to PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch in 2019. This game puts players in the role of a man waking up in a strange woman’s bed after getting blackout drunk at a bar the night before. Players must decide what to inspect in the room to try to figure out what they can about this girl and what happened the prior night.

With a premise like that, it seems like this game might hold the potential to be an excellent mystery game, a creative romance game, or perhaps something lewd and fun… but One Night Stand isn’t really any of those things. On the bright side, I can say that the writing here is genuinely good, even if it doesn’t seem to last long enough to build anything interesting with it. A playthrough of this game can be completed in 5-10 minutes, and players are challenged to try to find all of the game’s multiple endings, which will depend on what items you investigate, and what conversation choices you select.

Some endings will have you tossed out after upsetting the girl, and others will have you getting dressed and parting amiably. A lot of endings are very similar to each other, with the circumstances of your character’s departure only differing slightly from another playthrough. Pretty much none of the endings feel like any great revelation or satisfying conclusion, though… and I suppose that’s probably the point – you’re a pair of strangers who slept together after a night of heavy drinking, not star-crossed lovers or characters in a murder mystery. Still, while this game may be making a statement about the disposable nature of one night stands, being intentionally anticlimactic doesn’t keep the game from feeling, well, anticlimactic.

It doesn’t help that the steps players need to take to unlock one ending or another are not necessarily clear – it’s not like you’re given a guide which items to investigate, or which order to look at them (well, unless you opt to look up a FAQ online), and it’s frustrating to make some choices differently only to get the exact same ending as a previous playthrough.

There is one element of One Night Stand that works well, and that is the game’s presentation, which uses nice watercolor-style backgrounds, and an appealing rotoscoped line art style for the woman, which makes her movements and gestures seem realistic despite being mostly a bunch of black squiggles on the screen. These visuals are backed by a subdued soundtrack that lets the game’s story be the focus.

I should note that One Night Stand makes surprisingly good use of the Nintendo Switch’s unique features, with players having the option to control the game using traditional gamepad controls, touchscreen controls, or a single Joy-Con with gyroscopic motion controls. All of these work fine, although I think I ultimately preferred the standard gamepad controls.

Given that it’s a $5 game, One Night Stand’s extremely short length doesn’t seem too off-putting, but the lack of length contributes to a game without any significant twists or especially deep characters – no matter what their choices, players will feel like they’ve barely gotten to know anything about the girl they’re talking to and secretly investigating, and while One Night Stand is still an overall pleasant experience, it ultimately feels like a completely disposable one.

tl;dr – One Night Stand is a Visual Novel that puts players in the role of a man waking up in a strange woman’s bed after a night of drinking, inspecting items in her room to try to piece together who she is and what happened the prior night. The game’s presentation and writing are good, but the game can be completed in 5-10 minutes, and while it encourages players to play through it multiple times for different endings, none of the endings are especially revelatory or compelling. This isn’t a bad game, but it feels like a very disposable one.

Grade: C

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are MB, Andy Miller, Johannes, u/RamboFox, Exlene, Eli Goodman, Ilya Zverev, Stov, Connor Armstrong, and K.H. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}