Call of Nightmare

Call of Nightmare is a first-person rail shooter set in a world overrun by demonic horrors. Players must survive by killing everything that moves, battling through diverse environments ranging from ancient destroyed cities to forest fringes. Armed with a limited supply of ammunition and three lives, the core gameplay involves shooting zombies, spiders, and monsters while managing reloads and health to progress through different locations.

Call of Nightmare: A Cautionary Tale from the Digital Abyss

In the vast and storied annals of video game history, there exist titles that are celebrated as masterpieces, others that are forgotten as curiosities, and a rare few that serve as stark, unflinching monuments to the absolute nadir of the craft. Call of Nightmare, a 2017 release from the enigmatic developer Faton (also operating under the name NightmaresGames), is not a game to be played, but a artifact to be studied. It is a perfect storm of cynical design, technical incompetence, and marketplace exploitation, representing the very worst impulses of the digital distribution era. This review is an archaeological dig into a game that barely exists, a title whose primary legacy is as a footnote in discussions about Steam’s asset-flip crisis.

Development History & Context

The Studio in the Shadows
To speak of Faton or NightmaresGames is to speak of a phantom. The developer left behind no trail of previous triumphs, no studio website, no developer diaries—only a handful of games on Steam and the Wii U eShop, all sharing the same hallmarks of low-effort production. This anonymity was a feature, not a bug, emblematic of a specific breed of developer that emerged in the late 2010s. Their business model was not predicated on crafting engaging experiences, but on volume, leveraging the accessibility of game engines like Unity and the then-lax curation of digital storefronts to flood the market.

A Landscape Ripe for Exploitation
Call of Nightmare was released on October 13, 2017, a period often described as the height of the “Steam Direct” problem. Valve’s move from the curated Greenlight system to the more open Direct system had inadvertently opened the floodgates. For a mere $100 recoupable fee, anyone could publish a game. This created a gold rush for bad-faith actors who could quickly assemble—not create—”games” using pre-purchased asset packs, often with no cohesion or original design. Call of Nightmare was a product of this environment, designed not to captivate players, but to momentarily catch the eye of a scrolling shopper, secure a few impulse buys at $0.99, and then vanish into the ether.

Technological “Ambition”
The game’s purported vision, as stated in its official Steam description, was to plunge players into a “demonic world” filled with “deadly horrors.” The technological constraints it faced were not those of hardware limitations, but of sheer ambition and skill. It was a first-person rail shooter, a genre that requires careful pacing, enemy placement, and visual feedback to be satisfying. Call of Nightmare ignored these fundamentals, presenting instead a sterile, disjointed slideshow of incompatible assets.

Narrative & Thematic Deep Dive

The “Plot”
To analyze the narrative of Call of Nightmare is to attempt literary criticism of a fortune cookie. The entirety of its story is contained in a single paragraph on its store page: “Deadly horrors fill the world. To survive in this demonic world, you have to kill everything that moves. You will visit different parts of the world, from ancient destroyed cities to forest fringes.”

This is not a narrative; it is a placeholder. A list of generic concepts (horrors, demons, zombies, spiders, ancient cities) thrown at a wall with the hope that some might stick and vaguely resemble a game setting. There are no characters, no dialogue, no lore, and no sense of progression or purpose. The thematic depth begins and ends with “shoot the thing.”

The True Theme: Cynicism
The only coherent theme Call of Nightmare successfully communicates is one of profound cynicism. It is a game built on the assumption that its audience has low standards, that the mere presence of a gun and a monster model is enough to constitute a product. It thematically explores the emptiness of digital consumerism—a product that exists solely to be a product.

Gameplay Mechanics & Systems

The Core “Loop”
The gameplay of Call of Nightmare can be deconstructed with brutal efficiency. It is a rail shooter stripped of all its defining and enjoyable qualities.
* Interaction: The player is passively moved through a series of environments. Their only agency is to move a cursor and click on enemy models that appear. There is no movement control, no dodging, no strategic positioning.
* Combat: Clicking on an enemy causes it to disappear. There is no animation for being shot, no hit feedback, no visceral satisfaction. It is the video game equivalent of clicking on pop-up ads.
* Resources: Ammunition is finite. When it runs out, the player must press R (or right-click) to “reload.” This is not a tactical consideration but a tedious interruption.
* Health: The player has three hearts. Losing them all results in a game over. This is the only system with any consequence, and it exists only to provide a failure state.

UI and Presentation
The user interface is minimalist to the point of being barren. It displays the bare essentials: ammo count and health. Its functionality is as perfunctory as the rest of the game. The lack of any options menu, keybinding customization, or even a pause feature speaks volumes about the priority placed on user experience.

A Masterclass in Flawed Design
Every mechanic is flawed. The rail progression is jarring and illogical, instantly “transferring” the player between disconnected scenes. The enemy spawns feel random and unrehearsed. The act of shooting lacks weight, impact, or meaning. It is not so much a game system as it is a proof-of-concept for the most basic input recognition possible.

World-Building, Art & Sound

An Asset Flip Par Excellence
The world of Call of Nightmare is not a world; it is a garage sale of Unity Asset Store purchases. The game’s promotional promise of “ancient destroyed cities” and “forest fringes” translates to a handful of pre-made, low-poly environments that clash violently with one another. A texture-less ruin might be followed by a generic tree model pack, with no artistic throughline or atmospheric intent.

The enemy designs—”zombies, spiders, monsters”—are similarly ripped from disparate asset packs, resulting in a bestiary that feels completely incoherent. There is no visual storytelling, no environmental detail, and no sense of place. The art direction is non-existent.

Sound Design: A Void of Silence
If the game features any audio beyond the most basic sound effects, it is not mentioned in any source material and was not noted by the few who played it. The experience is largely silent, devoid of a soundtrack to set the mood, ambient noise to build tension, or impactful sound effects to sell the combat. This auditory void only heightens the feeling of emptiness and lack of effort.

Reception & Legacy

Critical and Commercial Performance
Call of Nightmare was met with the universal disdain it deserved.
* Critical Reception: No professional critic reviewed the game. This in itself is a powerful statement; it was beneath the notice of the gaming press.
* Player Reception: The data is scathing. On Steam, it holds a “Mostly Negative” rating based on user reviews, with only 20% of its 10 reviews being positive. On MobyGames, it holds a user rating of 1.5 out of 5 from 2 ratings. The Steam forums became a memorial to its poor quality, with discussion threads asking “Is it Sh*te?”, “Why did you make this game?”, and simply “is scam?”.
* Commercial Performance: According to VG Insights, the game sold an estimated 462 units and grossed approximately $1,226 in its lifetime. These figures cement its status as a commercial non-entity, a failed attempt even within its own cynical genre.

Lasting Influence: A Cautionary Tale
The legacy of Call of Nightmare is not found in games it inspired, but in the conversation it represents. It is a prime exhibit in the case against the unregulated marketplace. Alongside infamous developers like Digital Homicide, Faton and its Call of Nightmare became a symbol of the asset-flip phenomenon that plagued Steam and, to a lesser extent, the Wii U eShop.

Its historical value is purely academic. It serves as a perfect case study for:
* How to identify low-effort games: Mismatched assets, vague descriptions, anonymous developers, and a $0.99 price point.
* The perils of automated storefront curation: It highlighted the need for better quality control, a problem Valve has since addressed with more sophisticated algorithms and human curation.
* The resilience of gamers: The immediate and vocal rejection of the game by the community on forums showed a collective standards check against such products.

Conclusion

Call of Nightmare is not a bad game. To call it “bad” would imply that it functioned on a level where qualitative assessment is possible. It is an anti-game. A hollow shell of purchased assets assembled around the most minimal interactive framework possible. It has no redeeming qualities as a piece of entertainment; its mechanics are broken, its art is incoherent, its sound is absent, and its narrative is non-existent.

Its place in video game history is secured not through achievement, but through failure. It is a fossil from a specific, regrettable period in the industry’s evolution, a reminder of what happens when creation is divorced from artistry and becomes purely transactional. For historians and journalists, it is a valuable artifact—a definitive example of what not to do. For everyone else, it is a nightmare best left unanswered. The final verdict is that Call of Nightmare is less a game and more a digital ghost, a fleeting, cynical whisper in the vast library of gaming, whose only purpose is to warn others of the abyss.