Ark Noir Reviews

This game is very niche and underrated compared to other games in it's genre; however I completely recommend this game to those who want an corridor-crawler experience with "HEAVY" RNG dependent game-play. While I can't recommend this game for the $10 asking price, it does go on sale a lot and is worth the 50-75% off price tag for this game. While I did get my money worth from this game, I think this game requires a bit more love. This game is translated from Japanese to English as many guides point out and the translation quality is rather good, though pretty direct sometimes. And I got this game around the time it was mostly neutral reviews (more negative than positive) as well so it sucks to see many people not liking this game. However, this game is "BRUTAL" if you are not use to the game-play of older RPG's due to the game sometimes causing a game-over situation which can be completely out of your hands. I recommend """NOT PLAYING ALBERT""" for your first few runs, due to him being a neutral middle-ground between high "luck" (Fortune) or high health. The game will require you to play several times to figure out the mystery aboard the ship, and will require both getting an S rank with all the characters AND an F rank to unlock everything. I just wish there was more content to add to the game, or even a remake of which could improve the systems provided in the game. For myself, I managed to find the assets used in the project and the music inside and they are some pretty good tunes in this game. I really like Stage 3's theme the most. I completely recommend this if you have some leftover cash laying around and want a brain-musher to do something. Please give this game more love.

While the premise and idea is interesting, there's just way too much RNG. Often time you'll get back luck with monster encounter after encounter and you'll die.

While Ark Noir looks a lot like your standard visual novel, it plays more like a visual novel, rogue-lite, RPG hybrid. There are three characters to choose from, each with slightly different attributes and dialogue with the different passengers that you encounter. When you start, there are five floors between you and the lifeboats. Each floor has 100 steps between you and the stairs. In these 100 steps, any number of things can happen randomly. You can come across passengers that you can choose to try and rescue (in exchange for a certain item, or some of your 'Fortune'), or you can trigger random enemy encounters, rooms to rest in, or storage containers with items in them. As you rescue passengers and progress, you unlock archive entries telling different parts of the story, and helping to flesh out the background. These, along with other unlocks, open up perks that you can add to your character when you die or restart. And you will die. Constantly. Luckily, it only takes maybe twenty minutes to beat the game at a good pace, once you have a decent set of perks & abilities. The stories & possible endings are a bit different depending on which character you choose, and there are a lot of conditions for opening up different perks & perk slots, so the replayability aspect is pretty solid for such an inexpensive game. I've enjoyed it, overall, and it seems like a good way to pass a rainy day.

This game is worth your time, and $10 USD is a fair price. * Resource management is the main gameplay aspect. You need to manage your HP, Fortune (lets you bypass otherwise difficult content and helps keep you supplied, but is limited in supply, slowly filling over time), and Inventory (for fighting, but also as consumables for helping NPCs and keeping yourself healed). You'll want to take on everything to get better endings, level ups, and unlocks, yet doing so will strain your ability to adapt to difficult moments. Eventually you do have to fight at the end of each floor, so you'll want to spend Fortune on weapons, but if you spend too much then you might not be able to save a vital NPC that might or might not show up. Or maybe your character is already good at fighting, but has such pitiful Fortune that you're stuck passing on rest rooms (full HP for a payment of Fortune) you really need. Everything is turn based, so there's no need to rush your decision-making, despite what the clocks on each floor might have you believe. * While this game is closer to a Roguelite than a Roguelike (you get access to perks and perk slots to start the game with, so each run could be made easier than the last, but it isn't Rogue Legacy levels of power creep...at least until you beat the game once), the game itself is fairly linear, so I wouldn't say it fits in either genre. Still, there's enough randomness/RNG for Rogue fans to like. There's also a "high score" mechanic of sorts that encourages the player to beat the game with a minimum of starting perks and level up bonuses. * The visual novel portion is decent. It is obvious that the script was written in Japanese initially, but the end result isn't that bad by indie standards. The plot is understandable, and aside from some specific words being spelled wrong consistently (posion=poison), the script makes sense. You will see a lot of repeated content in multiple playthroughs since the script is linear (you're trying to solve the mystery of the Noir and save the same handful of NPCs), but you can use Ctrl to skip the text. * There are the usual basic graphic settings, like 1080p and volume sliders, but the graphics as a whole are simply passable. Not all of the fonts used look great at 1080p, but I've played Japanese indie games with much worse problems than this one has. * I haven't played enough to fully judge the replayability (but I am trying to get a high score, hence the high number of hours played), but there are eight endings. Three of these are the "best" endings for the three playable characters, and the other five consist of endings where you either didn't solve the Noir case or didn't save every NPC you met...or some combination of both. Four hours and five runs in, I've gotten one of the "best" endings but not the other seven. I'd expect to play this game for around ~10-15 hours total before seeing everything it has to offer - and perhaps longer than that if playing for a high score. EDIT, Halloween 2019: I have since beaten Ark Noir with two of the three characters without the use of any Roguelite progression mechanics (free starting perks). I'm still working on getting that clear with Albert, but it is only a matter of time and luck. The balance is quite well done, assuming you go in expecting to lose but hoping to win. Getting a Best ending while also clearing without starting perks also seems difficult to do, but this is where you can customize your own difficulty - playing with a full six starting perks makes getting all of the endings on demand very easy.

This is a vastly underrated game. The gameplay is simple and intuitive, but also very challenging. There's lots of replay value with three characters and multiple endings. The music and atmosphere are a big plus. Some downsides: You're looking at the same screen over and over again. Also the plot is just okay. Overall, I wish more people would give this a try.

A potentially interesting visual novel let down by its RNG and resource management aspects -- the RNG renders much of the resource management moot (save the medicine for X event that *might* happen and risk dying, or use it and then proc a rest/healing opportunity in the next room). The actual numbers in the game makes combat very deadly and gaining new items is - once again - purely RNG. As a VN it also lacks some basic quality of life features -- the only cutscene/dialogue you can skip is the opening scrawl, with nothing added along the usual "skip already seen dialogue" lines, despite it being designed for replays/multiple runs. Equipping new perks requires you to return to the main menu and equip them after going back through character select, plonking you back in the only cutscene skipped by pressing "Retry". It is, in a word, frustrating. Maybe these aren't deal-breakers for you, but I've had to put this one down.

Ark Noir is a short, bite sized game that could be called a dungeon crawler with plot, or a visual novel with gameplay elements. There's also some heavy rng and roguelike mechanics here, though its a straight shot down hallways towards your goals rather than exploration based. As someone who enjoys all the elements at play here, I really enjoyed my time with this game. Something to keep in mind, is that it goes from seemingly impossible to almost trivialized over time through unlocking starting perks and additional slots to socket them in. But there's another threshold here, and once you truly understand the mechanics and know what to expect, the game becomes substantially easier. There are 3 main characters to play as (who all have their own subplots) and several endings. One thing I really appreciate is that all unlockables, endings, and achievement requirements are explained in the menu, and the game keeps track of what you've already accomplished and what you still need to do to get to 100%. The plot and premise is interesting enough for me to want to know more about the game world. For its briefness, the characters are intriguing and the story is good, if you can ignore one really odd deliberate plot point -- the head of security for a ship tasked with saving humanity from its demise is a 15 year old boy. Prodigy or not, that doesn't track. But as it turns out that is the way it is solely to establish that only someone small can fit in either of the ship's dive suits.

This game is an incredible mix of visual novel storytelling with roguelite gameplay elements. Ark Noir takes place aboard the refugee ship Noir as it flees a sinking continent. You pick one of three characters, an all rounded reporter, the combat focused security officer and the fortune favored politicians doctor and awaken aboard the bottom floor of the Ark to discover the ship is sinking and all of the animals it was carrying has escaped and must battle your way to the top of the ship and freedom while making hard choices along the way. The gameplay is pretty unique, you advance one step at a time through each floor in a linear manner, every so often an event will occur signalling a battle, an opportunity to rescue one of the many unique crew members, information crucial to discovering the truth from one of the members you've encountered or a chance to rest or search for items. At the 100th step of each floor is a boss encounter. The game is really about resource management, it's about weighing odds and trying to make the most of what you're given. Do you use your limited fortune to run from this fight? Or waste the last of your ammo? Do you hope the enemies next attack is a weak one, or do you use some fortune to see what it'll be? Do you search this room for weapons or hope to save your fortune for the rest spot up ahead to regain your HP? Or do you hope the next enemy will be easy enough to finish off that you can use your level up to heal, instead of using it as a precious increase of your attack or defense. The Fortune aspect really makes this game a winner, functioning as a resource alongside health you regain a small amount, depending on your character, every 10 steps on a floor. It's vital to find items, run away from enemies, heal at rest spots, determine an enemies next move and, if you lack the special item necessary, save crew members you'll need to unlock endings and even reroll perk options at each level up to find the one they really need. Everything presented is obvious, after a death or two and it just becomes this really fascinating puzzle where you'll make 1000 crucial quick decisions over the course of a run's 15-45 minute run time. It is immensely replayable, between the 3 characters, and the 3 dozen or so starting perks you unlock across the games many different endings and gameplay conditions (with a helpful hint system for those who don't wish to waste time puzzling out what they might be, without spoiling themselves) give you unique ways to approach each run. And unlocking things makes things easier for subsequent runs, giving you more starting perk slots and more powerful and interesting perks to put in them. A fun twist is that you are given a score at the end of each run giving players looking for a bit more distance with this title a chance to challenge themselves with runs where they take as few perks and level up advantages as they go. This game is unlike anything I have played, it has a very distinct style and approach that really works. I like what it does, it's very smart, and I look forward to completing this game. Absolute value at 10$ if you're the kind of gamer who respects when a developer does something unique. A friendly tip, ctrl skips dialogue. Use it in second+ runthroughs. You're welcome.

Give the game a chance. Despite the rather plain and crude interface, the story and the characters are quite interesting. The English localization might have some quirks but is relatively competent. The difficulty is very high in the beginning. This is rather intended since the game utilize a perk system - starting from the second playthrough you'll be able to equip at least two perks from the beginning, and there are 6 initial perk slots in total. You'll also unlock much stronger perks in general when you successfully solve certain events, so the game becomes much easier and more manageable later on. For reference, I managed to reach late Floor 3 on my first playthrough as Albert the journalist. Different protagonist also have specific plot lines with other NPCs to keep the game interesting. All in all, it's a well-made game and I'm intrigued to find out more. Would recommend.

This is a really nice indie game-gem , which will look good in every RPG fans` library. And as a vn, it is decent, too. AN feels more like an rpg/dungeon crawler/survival game, than a vn, though. So what do you get ? 1. A "Whodunnit"- and Why ? - mystery. I love those :) 2. Decent story, for a "short" game - though really weird at times ( Why on earth is the chief of security 15 years old ? ) And the conversation is a bit off now and then. But overall, absolutely decent. You wake up in a sinking ship , an Ark filled with refugees and animals in cages . You have to make it 5 floors up to the lifeboats, while saving people ( or not - if you want the baddie achievement ), while finding out the truth about who and why, and while fighting lots of scary savage creatures ( they have broken free from their cages, of course ) 3. Resource management - very well made. 4. Perks - or skills. If you die, you have to start from floor 1 again, and the only thing you can keep is some skills. Which get more varied and better with playing. 5. Roguelike Point & Click RPG - and yes, you will die. A lot. 6. 3 different characters to play, each with their own story, and each with different starting attributes. 7. Relaxing game - but it still keeps you on your toes ! 8. Several different endings, according to your actions, choices - and luck . 9. Very difficult to start with, but it gets easier - but never ! Easy. 10. Not so short a game after all, then , - I have 59 + hours in it, and while writing this, I still have to figure out the last 2 achievements . 11. One of of my "Just-Need-To-Try-One-More-Time-Before-I-Go-To-Sleep" - games ;) 12. Cards and Steam achievements :) Here`s a gameplay-video, very well made - you will get the true feeling of what the game is like, watching it . Made by "Webweaver Actual Filler" ( or "RollPlayingGamer" - his Steam name) : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llaeC9fzcHM&t=1909s Anything I don`t like ? No, not really - maybe it could have lasted longer, and had more varied and interesting conversation. but overall I really like this game as it is.