Among the Sleep
We're back to first-person spookhouse rides with Among the Sleep, a game that saw a lot of early press because of its novel feature of a toddler protagonist. I got to know Among the Sleep very well before I finally got the opportunity to play it today, specifically the opening hour of the game. Giant Bomb showed off an early build in a 2013 UPF, and Patrick took on the full game itself in a solo Quick Look. After that, it featured in one of the 2014 "Shitstorm of Scariness" episodes from the Super Best Friends Play Zaibatsu. It definitely feels like I've seen the opening section - where the infant protagonist passes through his home at night before tumbling down a rabbit hole where the game begins proper - at least three times, and the overall atmosphere and distinct perspective made me eager to see more of it eventually. I suppose mid-2016 is "eventually" enough.
Beyond its headline feature, however, the game is very light on... well, everything. It's the sort of game that might dismissively be labeled a walking simulator (though perhaps a crawling simulator would be more apt) but it's a reductive term for a game that at least has some minor survival horror "dodge the big evil unkillable thing" stealth and building a set of traversal puzzles around a tiny human with very little vertical reach to work with via moving objects around for a climbing boost.
The game has a lot of cute touches like that: The hero's new teddy bear is both a mellow voice in your ear whenever the game's atmosphere gets too oppressive and he can create a small burst of light when hugged for comfort as the game's flashlight equivalent (the button to hug is "F", which seems like an odd sequitur until you realize it was designed to make it easier for fans of this genre who instinctively reach for the F key whenever their surroundings are too obfuscated by darkness); the child protagonist can either stand upright or crawl, with the former giving him better height and the ability to climb furniture while the latter lets him move faster, but he'll also fall over if you try running too long while standing - this is one of those fortuitous cases of ludonarrative not-dissonance (harmony?) where it's perfectly natural for a toddler to lose balance and fall over, and also serves to remind players that if they're trying to get somewhere in a hurry they'd be better off crawling anyway. The game also wisely puts a lot of stock into the idea that of the scariest things in a young child's world would be the parts of their environment they don't understand; minor spoilers, but two of the big scary enemies to avoid include creatures based on your mother's coat hanging on a coatrack, which is first introduced as a minor jump scare early in the game and the furnace in the basement suddenly coming to life (which is almost certainly a nod to Home Alone).
There's no getting past just how slight the game is, though. It has three sections after the opening tutorial/prologue, progressing through which generally involves finding keys and doubling back to find the locked doors they fit into, and occasionally you'll have to elude a large monster by taking advantage of your diminutive form and hiding underneath furniture. There's a collectible sidequest - just my luck after that Saga chapter ofDreamfall Chaptersa few days ago that it's yet another bunch of well-hidden child drawings - and the conclusion to the game's story might surprise you, or it might not. Like many Indie games, it's about as long as it probably needs to be, but once you've gotten used to the novelty of pulling out drawers for steps and crawling under sofas in the opening chapter, there's not a whole lot more the game has to show you beyond a few trippy nightmare environments and some minimal key puzzles. There's a short, separate prologue chapter too which is unrelated to the early builds of the game that I saw and is instead a self-contained adventure in a different household. It also has plenty of hints for where the main game's story is heading, so for as counter-intuitive as it seems I'd recommend tackling it after the main game is over.
The Verdict: Fine for an afternoon, or maybe later in the evening to enhance the spookiness, but don't expect to get much of anything out of this one. Three stars.
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