Title: Among the Sleep
Platform: PC / PS4 / Xbox One (reviewed)
Developer: Krillbite Studios
Release date: Out now
tl;dr: Â A short but almost psychadelic experience.
Price: £12 / $15 / €15
Family Focus: Click here for more information.
How many of you can remember what went through your mind back when you were just a toddler? I’m guessing the memory might be more than a bit patchy. Among The Sleep seeks to give some perspective on what the inside of a two-year-old’s head might just be like. Turns out, it can be crazy and surprisingly scary.
Among The Sleep first came to light as a Kickstarter campaign that saw success and full development. After 8110 backers pledged nearly $250,000 to support the game, it finally made its way to home consoles and PCs.
I think a good way to look at this game is how it matched up to the original description of the game in the campaign. Let’s take a look at that:
“What happens when you mix a child’s perspective and imagination, with the surreal nature of dreams? Quite a lot, I guess, but we think one of those things is an interesting premise for a horror adventure.”
From the off, the concept of perspective is critical to the design of Among The Sleep. That might seem a bit obvious with the height difference, but it goes a little bit further than that. Look down and you’ll see yourself playing with your tiny hands when standing still. If you’re hugging your teddy for extra light in those dark areas, you’ll see him in your field of vision. Doors are even a mini-puzzle in themselves, thanks to that height perspective. Those handles are devilishly high up!
Next is imagination and surrealism; there’s certainly plenty of both in this game. Signs and notes are no good in a game like this, since a two-year-old can’t read yet. Instead, the game relies on its environment to show you the way and what to do in order to proceed. There are four key areas to explore in this game, which can take roughly less than a couple of hours to complete. Unfortunately, a long game this is not.
Despite its length, it’s easy to see that each area has been meticulously designed to allow for the little one to explore. Such exploration is key in trying to find the crucial pieces required to progress, which plays to the nature of a child itself: always exploring and discovering new things.
Now, for the campaign’s aim to create a horror adventure. Whilst there are certainly horror scenes throughout the game, to call this a horror game might not be an accurate description. Full-on horror games deliver the fear all the way through, rarely stopping to lay on the beasties to come and chop your face off. In the entirety of the game, I counted only two small sections where I had to pay attention to the wanderings of a nearby scary beastie. The rest of the time is spent exploring dark corners of the child’s mind from traumatic experiences that has happened during the short time he has enjoyed so far on this crazy world we call home. If it ever gets too much, a good ol’ hug of your talking teddy-bear guide usually helps a lot.
A boy’s mother has no name…
It’s such a shame that the game was so short, though. It succeeded in delivering an adventure game inside the mind of a child, yet I’d struggle to agree to let this horror game (if you classify itself as such) alongside other games that truly lay on the fear. It’s certainly an experience that is well crafted by the team at Krillbite. Yet, I came in hoping for a good horror game and was sadly left a bit short.
If you consider this to be a wee first-person adventure, then this inches slightly more into the realm of recommendation.
The Good
- Awesome art design that’s extremely well thought out to be from a 2-year-old’s perspective.
- Atmosphere is tense, with some really good messages for parents out there.
- Your mom is Arya Stark.
The Bad
Family Focus
Among the sleep is rated PEGI 12 in Europe for scenes of horror. The age rating will probably give you an idea as to how extreme the horror is (hint: not very).
Many thanks to Xbox UK for sending GGS a copy of the game to review
