Not Tonight: Take Back Control Edition Review

Not Tonight: Take Back Control Edition Provided By SwitchWatch.co.uk
Developer: PanicBarn
Release Date: Jan. 31, 2020
Price: $24.99, £19.49, €22,99
Game code provided by No More Robots
Game Size: 946MB

We’ve got yet another exciting game to check out this week. It’s called Not Tonight: Take Back Control Edition, a game for the Nintendo Switch. It was previously published on PC. How will it fare on the Nintendo Switch? Let’s see!

STORY

The summary of Not Tonight describes it as a post-Brexit, politically charged management game in which you are, by trade, a bouncer. As a citizen of European heritage, you must stay out of trouble in order to stay in the UK. Will you do as asked and behave yourself, or will you join the resistance and fight the people in power? 

Starting out, you receive a letter regarding your residence request being denied. You must earn £2,500 by the specified date to maintain your transitional residence, and only have a month of allowed residence. 

Will you let in an underage girl that constantly attempts to bribe her way into the pubs? Or will you sell drugs as a side gig in order to make enough money to stay? Will you join the resistance in bombing pubs, among other things? What will you do to survive and stay in the UK?

GAMEPLAY

You start off by choosing your heritage, appearance, and the format of the date. I’m not sure how it affects Not Tonight’s gameplay yet. You end up taking on jobs through an app, and once at those jobs, you must quickly decide whether to let someone in or not based on their license or ticket. I accidentally let in two underage people on my first go as I was so worried about time, not having noticed the date they gave me for when people had to be born before in order to enter. 

You have quotas for how many people you let in and will make bonuses based on those numbers. I wasn’t fond of the time limits, as I’m not terribly good at this bouncing gig. You also have a limited number of mistakes you can make before you get fined or fail the job, so you must be careful. People in line that you deny entry to may attempt to bribe you to get in. I never took the bribes, so I don’t know what happens if you accept them.

You also have to watch for fake IDs besides expired ones or those who are too young. If the flag isn’t in color or there’s no hologram, you need to deny entry to that person. I didn’t do well at this at first, as I was paying attention to the many other details on the IDs. You also have to look and make sure the people match the photos on the IDs, which can be difficult with the darkness on the screen. It was just too much for me to handle all at one time, as you have to fulfill a minimum quota of people you let in. Add in tickets and stamps and nationality checks, and I did even worse. 

I ended up failing a job pretty early into the game, which affects your “social credit” or your “safety” as a transitional resident. You have to deal with time limits, which was frustrating due to how many factors you have to check before letting people in. I think the game would be more accessible without time limits, but I understand why they have them.

Buying suitable clothing also seems to be part of the bouncing job, as well as becoming a British consumer. You must be careful with your spending, however, as you need to save your money to help maintain a transitional residence. Rent is another worry, because once you have proven to have steady income, the government will start charging you. Failure to pay on time will affect your social credit.

Doing well at bouncing will increase your bouncer level, which will give you better equipment.

There are some plot points it seems, with characters sending you letters or text messages.

AUDIO

You have the option of choosing your voice in Not Tonight. Unfortunately, I didn’t hear a very distinctive difference between the available options. The voices seem to just be a bunch of random sounds put together and were rather annoying. I did think the music at the venues was decent, however.

VISUALS

The graphics are adequate but nothing special. They’re rather drab, which I suppose is fitting considering the state of things in the game. I did take issue with how dark it was sometimes, specifically when you had to let people into pubs/bars. It could be difficult to see people’s hair, which is part of making sure that people match the picture on their ID. 

VALUE

At $24.99/£19.49/€22.99, it is a little pricey. However, if you really enjoy somewhat challenging simulation games, it might be worth the full purchase price. The game will last you around ten hours, so the price might not match well with the amount of play time. It’s up to you to decide if you think it’s worth a shot, though! 

Will you be picking up this title? Let us know what you think of it in the comments!