Topic: Day/Night cycles

I've always welcomed additional atmospheric touches as gaming has evolved - weather effects, background noise, and a day/night cycle, for example.

But I'm finding some annoyances with the way day/night cycles are implemented, for two main reasons:

• Speed - lack of user adjustment
• Impeding play

To me, Breath of the Wild gets it right. The cycle doesn't seem too fast, and other than increasing the amount of enemy encounters, it doesn't really obstruct you in any way, and is enjoyably atmospheric.

Games like Animal Crossing and GTA don't do too badly either, the game keeps running, the speed is OK, but certain options are closed off (shops closed, NPCs asleep etc).

But too many games in recent experience seem to get it wrong. Immediate examples that spring to mind are Dragon Quest Builders and Stardew Valley.

DQB the cycle is quite fast (you can't adjust the speed) and when it gets dark it hampers visibility too much. I try to keep playing but the reduction in visibility is to the point the game is not fun to play. To make matters worse, the only way to avoid it is to find/build a bed somewhere to go to sleep.

But Stardew Valley is the worst offender. I was really hyped for the Switch release, but I stopped playing within a week and haven't gone back. The cycle is so fast, and you don't even have the option to play through the night, the game forces you to bed and robs you if you don't get to bed voluntarily in time.

I'm all for atmospheric realism (within reason), but please, let us play through it, let us adjust the cycle speed.

I'm interested in hearing other games that do this well and others that do it poorly.

@gcunit Agreed on the positive examples. I can't comment on the bad ones, since I haven't played these (yet).

In general, I don't mind if games have a a shortened day & night cycle, or if it is darker in some games than in others. For me, it depends on where the game takes place: if it takes place in a city or town environment, you'd expect there to be streetlights, so that it won't get too dark, but if it is in a small village or wooded/foresty area, then I'd expect nothing else than it to be pitch dark, just like in real life.

And most games like that offer options to carry torches or lanterns, so that's why it doesn't really bother me that much. And having to go to sleep to get to the next morning and daylight visibility doesn't bother me either. No one stays up more than 24 hours in real life, so why should we in certain types of games?

It depends on the genre, of course, but I think that overall, it isn't all that weird.

One other bad example that comes to mind, time-wise, as in it switching the cycles too fast, is SpinTires, but luckily, it isn't too dark to see, and of course you've got headlights on the car you drive, but still. Don't know if they kept that short cycle in the American Wilds spinoff, though. And on PC, you could even switch off the cycle, to keep playing in whatever time of day you preferred.

A good example I can think of, is Earthlock. That has a very different approach to the "realistic" day and night cycle, by simply implementing an eternal day or eternal night, depending on the location you're in, because the planet has stopped spinning (hence the title of the game), and it works pretty well.

There's a burning desert, and a glacial, eternally snowy area on the other side, but even though it is dark,
all is still clearly visible, so I'd think that although this game doesn't really have day/night cycles, it still counts as a good example of how to implement circumstances like these into a game.

Can't think of any other examples, though, so I guess I'll end my comment here, and leave it up to others to add their two cents.

Xenoblade Chronicles has a pretty good day/night cycle. I don't think it affects gameplay much as far as I can remember, but it has some lovely visual effects and you can change the time of day whenever you like.
I also like how Pokémon's day/night changes in real time (though it would be nice to have an option to adjust it in-game) and how it ties in to certain Pokémon's spawn rates and evolutions. Generation 5's season changes were great too.

I don't know if you can change the time of day in DQ Builders like you can in other Dragon Quest games, but like ThanosRexxx said, you can just build a torch or lantern. I did in the demo, even. It's a staple of the genre and a callback to early entries where you needed a torch to get through dungeons.

Portal Knights has Day & Night cycle too, but the speed of the day cycle is just right.
If you don't like the Night time, you can speed up instantly by sleeping on the bed (you must bring a bed from your inventory).

@gcunit Well I actually happen to like Stardew Valley a lot so we're not gonna agree there. I enjoy the way it feels like you are indeed playing as a regular human with realistic limits. Real people can't work the entire day and then stay up all night still working hard physical labor. Though I do wish it was slowed down just a bit.

I also like the day/night implementation in games like Pokemon Gold and Silver and their remakes - with different Pokemon appearing at different times, and Animal Crossing New Leaf, with games connected to real world time and different things happening throughout the day. The only thing about this is - I think players should be allowed, within limits, to change their clock without penalty. Some people just cannot play games at certain times of the day, for those people, they should be able to change the clock with no-penalty. Then maybe have to wait a day before they can change it again (to prevent abuse)

The only thing I don't like in this regard are games that portray day/night swapping really fast. In Tales of Vesperia, there is a segment in the desert where it switches between the two like... every 5 minutes. It is obnoxious! And there is no real transition, it's like someone turned off a light switch! Thankfully it was only one section of the game.