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Among the Sleep
Developed by Krillbite Studios
Produced by Ole Andreas Jordet
No ESRB classification (safe for 10+)
Among the Sleep is another game that had me excited on concept alone, and also yet another that unfortunately I have to give a low score to. There’s a lot that can be said to its benefit, but the good is so loosely packed into such a small package that it is almost embarrassing that they released this as a finished product. It caused some stir a number of years ago with an initially promising trailer, featuring a toddler as the player character being hunted by some shadowy force. Three years later and the final product is little more than an hour, with gameplay so simplistic you wonder what they were doing with all that time.
Once again, I will be warning that this is going to be a spoiler heavy review, but this time it’s out of a lack of options. The game is so short and basic that you can’t talk about it without tripping over a major plot point or theme. Other than the intro and outro segments, the game only consists of four playable levels, and only in two are you in any danger. I actually checked my chat logs to see when I had told a friend I was going to start playing it, and I found I had beaten the main game in only an hour and and twenty minutes. After the supplemental DLC, the whole game said and done took me an hour and fourty minutes. There was one achievement I missed, so if I bothered looking up what it was I might be able to squeeze an extra ten minutes out of the game, but at that point I’d just be making excuses for it.
The premise of the game is intriguing enough to get me excited, even for a genre I typically dislike. Ever since Amnesia: The Dark Descent hit shelves, there have been a number of copycat games that have met with varying levels of success. Many of these games are made in Unity and you will never hear of them, since they lack any kind of polish or traction outside of parody Youtube channels. Still, every once in a while, a Slender pushes through to show us that even crap can be meme popular enough to push a project all the way to a disappointing final production. Equally rare, sometimes an Outlast shows us that there might be some hope for the genre.
If you are unfamiliar with the game type by mere reference alone, all of these games focus on you running and hiding from enemies rather than engaging them in combat. The bastard child of Survival-Horror and Sneak-em-ups, the games were at first widely well received as a counterbalance to the growing action trend in horror games. For those of us who grew up on Resident Evil and Silent Hill, the alternate kind of gripping horror that Amnesia (and before that Penumbra, but that game was a mess on the distribution end and went by relatively unnoticed) brought to the table was a welcome reprieve from the Resident Evil 5s of the world. Keep in mind, I don’t dislike games like Dead Space, but the actual traction this real true-blue horror game was getting gave me hope that perhaps the market would clamour for more strictly horror titles.
However, after a number of games were released and years had passed to let the hype settle, I find myself dissatisfied with the genre. I feel that taking away the player’s ability to defend himself entirely is cheap and unbelievable. I too agree that if a serial killer was stalking me and I suddenly didn’t have hands, that would be scary as hell, but I find it more compelling personally to try to overcome a great threat with my meager means. I can’t help but balk at how the protagonist of Outlast could fail to pick up one of the many broken bricks or pieces of rebar nearby and attempt even a feeble defence, but I guess I’m also one of those guys who likes all of his knits to be picked in a pleasing narrative arc with no holes.
So in comes Among the Sleep, a game that realistically explains such powerlessness by putting you in the role of a 2 year old. An incredibly interesting concept from the get go, having to navigate the world through feeble crawls and shoves makes us really consider game space in a whole new way. In theory, at least. While the developers do some interesting stuff in regards to crawling versus walking, where crawling is faster but your actions are limited, it doesn’t come off as anything more than the standard “sprint and hide in a cupboard” gameplay of every other horror game. While I had to stand on chairs to open doors, every obstacle had conveniently placed boxes for me to climb up. It never felt like I was a little person in a world too big for me, forced to make my way, but rather I was a character in a video game navigating a space custom tailored for me. Just like every other video game.
Seeing as how the game stars a toddler, it is safe to assume that the whole thing is just his imagination. While I personally would love to see a game starring the a toddler on the USS Ishimura during the events of Dead Space, I don’t think the world is ready for first person toddler eviscerations. It is pretty cool how Among the Sleep created this horror dreamscape, and during the first scene of the game I was clenching my bowels in excitement over what the black shadow slowly creeping up the stairs behind me had in store.
While the levels are all imaginatively realized, there was a split between the levels that were relevant narratively and the ones that were well made. The first level takes place in the house, and as the introduction is the least terrifying and most grounded in reality. The second level takes place at a playground, and is similarly almost real save for distorted geometry. Both of these levels lack any danger, requiring you to walk in a straight line and pick up objects to progress. The third and fourth levels require some puzzle solving, but I couldn’t exactly tell why they related to the child. I get that the third level was a distorted cabin by a lake, but it didn’t really make sense why my toddler would imagine himself there. The last level was an Escher-like series of corridors, which while visually striking didn’t really scream “the mind of a toddler.”
Similarly, while I kind of liked the plot and ending, it is executed poorly. The big revelation is done so ham fistedly, that it was almost as if the game expected you to also be a toddler, incapable of basic narrative deduction. The teddy bear is a nice companion and narrator, given that the toddler is incapable of speech. The teddy bear has this really awesome childlike manner and disposition, and brings an excellent contrasting naive innocence to the darker setting and themes. In the end, it all gets cocked up by a big white light deus ex machina. Regardless of the parts I did like, it felt like I had just watched a short film rather than played a game.
Above all else, the game just isn’t scary. There are spooky and creepy things, and at times I found myself actually liking the toned down level of horror, but when they try to ramp it up it falls tremendously flat. The game is at its best while being subtle, but when it tries to become exciting it stretches itself too thin. The enemy spawns predictably and follows very direct patterns, and then just poofs away when you crawl under a table. There is a cool part in the fourth level where you are being hunted by the Babadook, but as long as you don’t knock over the conspicuously placed beer bottles, it never spawns. While the game was frequently tense, I was never really in fear for my safety.
The problem is, this could all be redeemed if the game offered me more, but there really is nothing else to be said. The game is seriously less than two hours long. Theres no replay value, and while I did really like the supplementary DLC, it just left me wondering why they couldn’t have made the whole game like that. I understand that yearly budgeted dev cycles are how we get Assassin’s Creed games with more bugs than the planet Klendathu, but if your years developing to hour of gameplay ration is under 1:1, theres some serious problems with your production process.
I really wish I could like this game more, but they had to do more with it. It seems like someone in the team had a good idea for a premise, and just no one figured how to capitalize on it. The game costs $20 regularly, and this is with multiple funding grants and a successful Kickstarter. While only $10 right now on sale, I couldn’t even recommend this game for $5. There’s just not a lot there.
2 out of 5
Categorized:Horror Gaming News
