I don’t play very many mobile games (nothing against them, I just have so many other platforms I’ve already got too many games for), but every once in a while an impressive one suddenly leaps out of the shadows and bites me. Nightgate is one such unexpected nibbler. I had never heard of the game, but there it was as the ‘Free App Of The Week’, a feature on my phone that I habitually check, despite the fact that there had never been a single worthwhile looking game offered on it before. I almost passed this one over too, dismissing it as something that looked like some businessman’s PowerPoint presentation gone horribly wrong.

At the last moment this cryptic description caught my eye though: ‘In the year 2398, a network of intelligent computers known as Nightgate, is the last remaining life form on Earth.’ Uh oh, is this a cyberpunk game? Well, now I have to try it!

And so I jacked into the Nightgate, where I found myself in the form of a little touch-controlled dot, navigating through a bizarre environment that seemed to be part Tron, part old-timey vector arcade game.

As it turns out, Nightgate is fascinating hybrid of platforming and puzzling, where you must touch and/or connect all the nodes which can be arranged in a complex manner that requires a little thinking, or simply guarded by nefarious looking security programs that will test your dodge reflex.

The soundtrack is also a very fitting and relaxing bit of ambient retrowave that helps sell the idea that you’re floating through what people in the seventies/eighties probably thought cyberspace would look like.

By the end of the 50 bite-sized levels, the game had left such a good impression on me that I immediately went and bought a few more mobile games by the same people (and I’m pretty sure I’ll be picking up that soundtrack too).

So if you’re ever in the market for some relaxing and beautifully designed micro-bursts of cyber-adventuring, log into the NIGHTGATE!