Midnight Scenes: The Nanny

About Midnight Scenes: The Nanny

Midnight Scenes: The Nanny is the third episode of Midnight Scenes, a series of short horror tales with adventure elements by Octavi Navarro, a pixel artist who worked on Thimbleweed Park and made Photographs, and Susanna Granell. Their studio, White Blanket Games, also made The Supper, The Librarian and Unwelcome. It came out for Windows on 27 October 2021, on Steam, GOG and itch.io, and is played in English.

Each Midnight Scenes episode is presented like an instalment of an old TV anthology, inspired by The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits. This one is set in the 1980s and seen through the eyes of Oliver, an eight-year-old boy. His parents are away, his teenage sister Tina wants nothing to do with him, and their babysitter is looking after them. After odd happenings in the woods, the nanny vanishes in the middle of the night, and the two set out to find her.

It plays as a story-driven point-and-click adventure, with the mouse alone. You walk Oliver through the cut-away rooms of the house at night and out to the woods and a lakeside jetty, click on what you find, look at objects up close, such as a walkie-talkie or a straw doll, and talk with Tina. A ouija board is among the things the children use. The earlier episodes were in black and white; this is the first in colour, in deep night blues and warm oranges, with an eerie soundtrack and sound effects carrying much of the mood.

The frights are supernatural rather than bloody: the store's note mentions horror themes with cartoon blood and cartoon gore, and the rating boards that rated it list frightening content. Buried Treasure, a long-time fan of the series, praised its writing, especially the bickering between brother and sister, and its ending, though it found the story more predictable than the first two episodes and wished each scene had more to look at. Players are kinder: it is Very Positive on Steam and rated 4.7 of 5 on itch.io.

HowLongToBeat puts the main story at about half an hour, and the store says about 40 minutes, so it fits one sitting. It suits players who like short, story-first horror and classic pixel-art adventures, and it asks for no fast reactions.

How to play Midnight Scenes: The Nanny

1. Start the episode and watch the opening as Oliver finds the nanny missing.
2. Click where you want Oliver to walk, and click on people and objects to look at or use them.
3. Left-click to move the dialogue on when a line appears at the top of the screen.
4. Examine items close up when the game shows them, then click Back to return to the scene.
5. Talk with Tina and follow her lead as the search moves from the house outdoors.
6. Keep exploring until the night's story plays out, in about half an hour.

Tips

• Turn off the lights, as the store suggests; the eerie soundtrack and sound effects do much of the work.
• Click on everything in a scene; small details move the story forward.
• Play it in one sitting: at about half an hour it is built to be taken in as a single episode.
• It needs no fast reactions and can be played with the mouse only.
• If you enjoy it, the other Midnight Scenes episodes and The Supper are by the same makers.

Questions