Among the Sleep Review
By: Steven Wallace
Follow me on Twitter: @Lethrface
In a world where we regularly associate “monsters” with hellish ghouls or otherworldly creatures that scare (or sometimes look sort of cute; Thanks Pixar), we forget about the monsters we face on a daily basis. Among the Sleep does a good idea to remind us this in an imaginary world from the mind of a child.
Among the Sleep's graphics are not groundbreaking but they get the job done. The Norwegian game developers, Krillbite Studios, created an atmospheric story that relied more on the stature and imagination of the protagonist than the detail and goriness of any monsters. Making use of the Unity engine, the visual effects to more to enhance the overall feeling of the otherwise low-poly models. The characters themselves almost look like something out of a Disney/Pixar movie, which isn't entirely a bad thing. The character you play also seems to be well designed as you will see from the shadows on the walls and the floors as this toddler you play as waddles around, and when you look down, you can see the childs hands moving around and trying to pick his bellybutton through his onesie, which is an awesome departure from most first-person games where you look down and you have no legs.
The game itself plays out a lot like Amnesia and you will spend the entire time collecting puzzle pieces to complete a larger puzzle and interacting with the environment while trying to avoid coming in contact with that level's fearsome monster. The goal for each level is to get to the memory of your mother and collect the object her memory is holding so that you may return to the hub, which appears to be a child's playhouse, and insert the object into a machine that will unlock the next level with the help of your teddy bear, who seems to be alive in this game and is the source of most of the games dialog, seeing as your character is only an infant and the most noises it makes is gasps, sighs and breathing with the occasional scream and crying if things don't quite go right.
To further the discussion of gameplay, there were a few gripes that I did have with it. In one or two areas, where you are forced to climb over objects to move on in the world, it almost felt like you had to enter a secret code to climb. You had to find the precise angle at which to stand and look to climb up onto whatever object you were trying to climb onto and that actually ended up causing me to be stuck in a section on a later level for at least 15 minutes; I assume this issue is more of a collision-box issue than anything else, though. Accompanied by minor flaws like that, I admittedly feel that there are far too many hiding places in my opinion, though. In one area, you are tasked with escaping a creature in a library and you can practically move from one spot to another just by crawling under bookcases. There were even moments when you didn't even have to hide and could stand right out in the open and look away and the monster wouldn't even come toward you. That kind of killed the hiding aspect for me, but that isn't to say that you won't have to hide, as if you do get caught, you will be forced to continue from the start of that area after coming face-to-face with the horrifying visage that your imagination created.
In total, this game lasts about 3 hours and spans 4 different levels, the first one being your own home where things aren't quite as it seems. In the beginning, you are given typical tutorial but it seems to breath life into the game by having you do things in your room until you pull your teddy bear out of your toybox and are told how to pause the game (which involves covering your eyes with your hands) and being told to enter your closet and hold him close so that he lights up the environment around you, which doesn't provide much solace in this game but it does allow you to see in the ever-increasing darkness in the game. After the tutorial, you are put to bed by a seemingly loving mother who seems to be putting you to bed in almost full daylight telling you that all of the other boys and girls of the world are going to sleep and are waiting for you in the dreamworld so that you can all play. This led to my girlfriend and I to make jokes about how this woman must be trying to get ready to go to happy-hour to “get her drink on,” though we didn't know how close to the truth we were until much later in the game.
As I mentioned in the beginning of this review, this game focuses on monsters that we face on a daily basis. The hints are all there throughout the game, in the form of bottles that appear to be alcohol (and a lack of food in the refrigerator in the beginning). When we inspected every cabinet in the kitchen, we didn't find cleaning supplies or any cans of food or even a bag of flower; all we found were bottles. Through the games environments, you will see pictures scribbled by a child that range from really happy to nearly creepy, as if it came from the mind of a mentally damaged child. On the walls, you will see what appears to be pictures of a child hiding from a monster under tables or chairs or even being held up in the air by what appears to be an adult and almost handed over to a monster. This game provides foreshadowing to it's fullest without outright spoiling the ending for you and by the time you find mother, you almost wish you hadn't because you start to see all of your questions and assumptions come together. In total, the writing is phenomenal.
The audio in this game is very well done. There was very little music and when you heard it, you knew something was coming after you or nearby and that was typically accompanied by an almost mind-numbingly tense static which almost reminded me of the sound I have heard in my head before when I've clenched my jaw, closed my eyes and plugged my ears as a child when I was frightened, so this was a very intense noise that added to the immersion to the game. The voice-acting was very well done and your teddy bear really comes across as a friend that even, as an adult, I would love to have. I would even go so far as to say the mother was voiced very well, and in the moments you do come across her memories, you almost feel like this is mom you would have always wanted, sounding genuinely loving and even playful.
This game plays well in most occasions but has some rather large issues to deal with, particularly closer to the end of the game. At one point, I had almost rage-quit the game because I had found a rather game-breaking bug where a moving platform would not move as it should which ended in multiple deaths. Upon being respawned into the world, we are greeted with the screen static that is associated with the fearsome monsters in this imaginary world, though none were around, and it wouldn't go away until we traveled back toward the broken puzzle. It had required a reload of the game at the last checkpoint to fix the bug, so it didn't completely hinder our progress, especially since the checkpoint was still rather close-by. The final level of the game almost felt as if it was rushed to be completed by deadline because of this. This wasn't the only bug that was noticed either as at some points, if you are required to replay a section due to “death,” you will sometimes see sections of the world right in front of you do not properly load and you are forced to walk closer to that portion of the world to get it to fully load, which can lead to you quite possibly getting yourself one-step closer to getting caught by a monster for a second time. Bugs like these are huge and rather frustrating to deal with and there were moments where I handed the controller to my girlfriend so she could play a bit and so that I could step away from the game and just watch, feeling slight anger toward the game as a whole.
Let's face it, this game is not perfect. The graphics aren't the most amazing you will ever see, and it is almost expected being that it is an indie game that was lovingly funded through Kickstarter and it is filled with bugs and frustrating situations which will require you to take a step away before coming back to the game to find your mother. The subtle storytelling made up for the frustrations, however, and kept me playing through to find out what was really going on and in the end, I was rather pleased with the game and the direction they took. I think that there will be a few patches required to solve most of the major bugs but I do think I would recommend this game to almost anyone; the message behind the story is a serious one that I think everyone should see and experience and since the game also has Oculus Rift support, that makes this game a very good choice if you want a full Oculus Rift experience.
Among the Sleep's graphics are not groundbreaking but they get the job done. The Norwegian game developers, Krillbite Studios, created an atmospheric story that relied more on the stature and imagination of the protagonist than the detail and goriness of any monsters. Making use of the Unity engine, the visual effects to more to enhance the overall feeling of the otherwise low-poly models. The characters themselves almost look like something out of a Disney/Pixar movie, which isn't entirely a bad thing. The character you play also seems to be well designed as you will see from the shadows on the walls and the floors as this toddler you play as waddles around, and when you look down, you can see the childs hands moving around and trying to pick his bellybutton through his onesie, which is an awesome departure from most first-person games where you look down and you have no legs.
The game itself plays out a lot like Amnesia and you will spend the entire time collecting puzzle pieces to complete a larger puzzle and interacting with the environment while trying to avoid coming in contact with that level's fearsome monster. The goal for each level is to get to the memory of your mother and collect the object her memory is holding so that you may return to the hub, which appears to be a child's playhouse, and insert the object into a machine that will unlock the next level with the help of your teddy bear, who seems to be alive in this game and is the source of most of the games dialog, seeing as your character is only an infant and the most noises it makes is gasps, sighs and breathing with the occasional scream and crying if things don't quite go right.
To further the discussion of gameplay, there were a few gripes that I did have with it. In one or two areas, where you are forced to climb over objects to move on in the world, it almost felt like you had to enter a secret code to climb. You had to find the precise angle at which to stand and look to climb up onto whatever object you were trying to climb onto and that actually ended up causing me to be stuck in a section on a later level for at least 15 minutes; I assume this issue is more of a collision-box issue than anything else, though. Accompanied by minor flaws like that, I admittedly feel that there are far too many hiding places in my opinion, though. In one area, you are tasked with escaping a creature in a library and you can practically move from one spot to another just by crawling under bookcases. There were even moments when you didn't even have to hide and could stand right out in the open and look away and the monster wouldn't even come toward you. That kind of killed the hiding aspect for me, but that isn't to say that you won't have to hide, as if you do get caught, you will be forced to continue from the start of that area after coming face-to-face with the horrifying visage that your imagination created.
In total, this game lasts about 3 hours and spans 4 different levels, the first one being your own home where things aren't quite as it seems. In the beginning, you are given typical tutorial but it seems to breath life into the game by having you do things in your room until you pull your teddy bear out of your toybox and are told how to pause the game (which involves covering your eyes with your hands) and being told to enter your closet and hold him close so that he lights up the environment around you, which doesn't provide much solace in this game but it does allow you to see in the ever-increasing darkness in the game. After the tutorial, you are put to bed by a seemingly loving mother who seems to be putting you to bed in almost full daylight telling you that all of the other boys and girls of the world are going to sleep and are waiting for you in the dreamworld so that you can all play. This led to my girlfriend and I to make jokes about how this woman must be trying to get ready to go to happy-hour to “get her drink on,” though we didn't know how close to the truth we were until much later in the game.
As I mentioned in the beginning of this review, this game focuses on monsters that we face on a daily basis. The hints are all there throughout the game, in the form of bottles that appear to be alcohol (and a lack of food in the refrigerator in the beginning). When we inspected every cabinet in the kitchen, we didn't find cleaning supplies or any cans of food or even a bag of flower; all we found were bottles. Through the games environments, you will see pictures scribbled by a child that range from really happy to nearly creepy, as if it came from the mind of a mentally damaged child. On the walls, you will see what appears to be pictures of a child hiding from a monster under tables or chairs or even being held up in the air by what appears to be an adult and almost handed over to a monster. This game provides foreshadowing to it's fullest without outright spoiling the ending for you and by the time you find mother, you almost wish you hadn't because you start to see all of your questions and assumptions come together. In total, the writing is phenomenal.
The audio in this game is very well done. There was very little music and when you heard it, you knew something was coming after you or nearby and that was typically accompanied by an almost mind-numbingly tense static which almost reminded me of the sound I have heard in my head before when I've clenched my jaw, closed my eyes and plugged my ears as a child when I was frightened, so this was a very intense noise that added to the immersion to the game. The voice-acting was very well done and your teddy bear really comes across as a friend that even, as an adult, I would love to have. I would even go so far as to say the mother was voiced very well, and in the moments you do come across her memories, you almost feel like this is mom you would have always wanted, sounding genuinely loving and even playful.
This game plays well in most occasions but has some rather large issues to deal with, particularly closer to the end of the game. At one point, I had almost rage-quit the game because I had found a rather game-breaking bug where a moving platform would not move as it should which ended in multiple deaths. Upon being respawned into the world, we are greeted with the screen static that is associated with the fearsome monsters in this imaginary world, though none were around, and it wouldn't go away until we traveled back toward the broken puzzle. It had required a reload of the game at the last checkpoint to fix the bug, so it didn't completely hinder our progress, especially since the checkpoint was still rather close-by. The final level of the game almost felt as if it was rushed to be completed by deadline because of this. This wasn't the only bug that was noticed either as at some points, if you are required to replay a section due to “death,” you will sometimes see sections of the world right in front of you do not properly load and you are forced to walk closer to that portion of the world to get it to fully load, which can lead to you quite possibly getting yourself one-step closer to getting caught by a monster for a second time. Bugs like these are huge and rather frustrating to deal with and there were moments where I handed the controller to my girlfriend so she could play a bit and so that I could step away from the game and just watch, feeling slight anger toward the game as a whole.
Let's face it, this game is not perfect. The graphics aren't the most amazing you will ever see, and it is almost expected being that it is an indie game that was lovingly funded through Kickstarter and it is filled with bugs and frustrating situations which will require you to take a step away before coming back to the game to find your mother. The subtle storytelling made up for the frustrations, however, and kept me playing through to find out what was really going on and in the end, I was rather pleased with the game and the direction they took. I think that there will be a few patches required to solve most of the major bugs but I do think I would recommend this game to almost anyone; the message behind the story is a serious one that I think everyone should see and experience and since the game also has Oculus Rift support, that makes this game a very good choice if you want a full Oculus Rift experience.
Pros:
- Graphics breathe life into the imagination of a child, creating sometimes Alice in Wonderland styled environments.
- The storytelling is done subtly to allow you to try to use your imagination and make sense of this world and why an infant would be subjected to it and has a true meaning behind it other than "let's make a scary game where you play as a child!"
- The controls are rather simple and easy for anyone to jump in and start playing.
- The sound in this game truly adds to immersion into the game.
Cons:
- Gamebreaking glitches cause problems even for the most patient gamer.
- Too many places to hide almost take away from the fear that you get from the enemies and at times, you can almost stand out in the open and just look away and they wont harm you.
- Sometimes, trying to climb over an obstacle isn't possible unless you position yourself at just the right angle, pat your head and rub your belly.
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