Little furry… um… creatures are hatched from eggs and require your constant care in order for them to prosper, learn, and eventually reproduce. These little bundles of fun are termed "Norns. All of these can be monitored and maintained with a variety of "helper" applets included with the product. One that I found hard to get a passing grade on.
Such is life. Controls consist of the mouse and the keyboard. Had they implemented some wrist-breaking lap-slapping force-feedback into the game, I might have had a little more to say. But alas, such is life. The interface is actually quite nice, if not a little unresponsive in areas. It looks like a normal Windows application that makes use of toolbars, pull-down menus and status bars. Notice I say normal Windows application and not "game. In the middle of all of the app-like controls is Albia, the side-scrolling world in which the Norns live their entire life.
A simple "hand" represents you, the devoted parent. With this hand, you can tickle the cute button nose of the Norns or slap them silly on the behind. You can also pick up various objects, save your Norns from drowning, and speak to them. This exhibits quite the versatility from such a simple hand. Once your Norn is hatched, it basically relies on you to teach it to come to grips with life in Albia.
The first task, and my hardest, is to teach your Norn its name. I called mine "Slappy. I spent the next 30 minutes getting Slappy to learn that I was "Daddy" and that she should follow me to learn how to eat. A couple of "Learning Computers" are scattered around the world. Norns can use these to learn simple tasks and definitions. If this fails you can always beat them into submission to "learn them good.
I eventually guided her to a fishing pole and caught her an Albian fish to eat. Everything had been going well up to this point, but she could not get through her thick skull that she was supposed to eat the fish. I spent 10 minutes waving the fish in front of her… yelling "Fish! Heck, she thinks she is one…why not. I quickly learned that Norns cannot swim and actually sink pretty fast. I plopped her back up to dry land and scolded her by slapping her little bum. Thinking quickly, I spent the next 10 minutes calling her "Abe Vigoda.
Once she had it in her mind that her name was now Abe, I set out to create her a brother. Barney was born without much complication and took to his name immediately. I then set forth to lead Barney over to his sister for a little introduction. She was gone! I used the pull-down menu to switch to Abe, and I found her once again at the bottom of the Albian sea. Stars circling her head signaled that all was not well with Abe. Norns are really cute. Like I said before, I think the big eyes have something to do with it.
They seem to be a cross between Ewoks and Gremlins before exposure to sunlight. They have a life span of about hours and reach adolescence after about an hour, meaning they've got a little less time as a living being than your run of the mill mosquito.
After about six hours they will begin to show an interest in the opposite sex. Norns are artificial life. They have digital DNA, a neural network and a chemical metabolism.
Every Norn is unique. Once you've figured out how to handle one Norn, you can get crazy and hatch a few more. Not only are Norns happier with some friends to keep them company, when they get to the proper age you can breed them. Norns can teach each other, so an older Norn can ease some of the work of caring for younger ones. Norns are not alone in their world, there are other creatures that you'll have to watch out for. They're called Grendels and they carry diseases and are generally nasty.
Once your Norn happens across a Grendel, they can be very difficult to get rid of. Your copy of Creatures has a button on the tool bar that takes you to an Internet site where you can trade Norns with people all over the world. Be warned, if you send off one of your Norns to spend some time in a friend's world, he may come back with all kinds of bad habits.
From the Creatures Web site you can get info from a Norn doctor, download more tools to care for and monitor your Norns, and download more Norns. You will soon be able to get a Creatures newsletter, look through and contribute to a Creatures scrapbook and link to even more Creatures sites. Breeding Norns can get quite scientific. This is a great game for kids under the age of twelve, but anyone can play this game. You will find several gadgets and bonus points everywhere.
This version of creature comes with better graphics and sound quality. Previous version was also very popular for excellent graphics and simulation.
Nightmare Creatures II comes out of the gates strong but, in the end, falls short of real lasting appeal. On one hand it's aesthetically on the mark. The sound effects are well-done if not cheesy in parts especially the persistent groaning. The dark and dank environments convey the nightmare world very well and the gameplay mechanics, while simple, are tolerable. So what's wrong?
I simply got bored with the game too fast. I kept hoping for more, be it more moves, more levers and switches, more breakable stuff, more interactivity with the environments and so on NC2 isn't a bad game but additional variety and deeper gameplay would've helped a lot.
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