Among the Sleep depicts a first-person horror story from a stumbling two year old’s perspective. Whilst experiencing a nightmare he spends a night trying to find comfort and ultimately his mother. The gameplay is more puzzle orientated and the environment is a skewed interpretation of a normal moonlit suburban household, until eventually the line between reality and the dream world blur.
The effects are exaggerated as a young mind may do, but it’s exaggerated enough to be genuinely startling in places. This story is a genuine new idea, whilst it isn’t groundbreaking in the graphics department it’s definitely immersive within the storytelling one.
It’s been a year since I first saw the video to this project, and finally now it’s hit Kickstarter. With a recent playthrough the game looks incredibly immersive and well made, but with an amount as high as $200,000 are they sure they can give up their day jobs. Whilst this is a big ask of the Kickstarter community, they might just do it.
Krillbrite studios has been working on Among the Sleep for some time now, as a project for their finished thesis piece they continued working on it after. Most of the designers have been working other jobs and have found it hard to get a natural flow on working on the game. Now their kickstarter bid is to get it out into the open as fast as possible instead of having to toss up between the two jobs.
Like Amnesia and Penumbra it is mostly based on exploration of the environment, also so far there is no indication of any type of way to defend yourself like Amnesia. The audio and graphical elements that are used in the teasers and playthroughs make the game seem a lot more realistic whilst drifting from the original real world “there’s nothing under your bed” scenario to the “there’s something in the house, and it’s not what it seems” scenario. Moving from the house to outdoors there could be inclusion of puzzle elements and hide and seek.
Whilst the game isn’t groundbreaking in designs it’s the idea that pulls this game out from the bottom of the heap. It’s gorgeous whilst eeiry environment and immersive gameplay definitely makes it stand out and it could just pull through to reach above and beyond it’s goal on kickstarter, but with an expected 4 hours of gameplay it will be a hard time trying to part people from the £15-20 they need to get the game.
Follow the game on Kickstarter
