Sleep Awake

You already know that the human mind is capable of producing the wildest dreams. When the subconscious is given free rein, anything can happen, and there can even be interaction with the real world, such as dreaming that you are falling, and when you hit the ground, you wake up. Dreams can distort the world, where colours are strange or people we know do not behave normally. It's quite Lynchian, one might say, and Sleep Awake has created an entire game about dreams and their interpretation, precisely to take this dream world as its starting point.

Sleep Awake is a fever dream of a game. The game takes place in a dystopian future that is almost destroyed, where the only remaining city is The Crush, as it's so nicely called. The name says almost everything about the atmosphere in the city. The world is plagued by a phenomenon called The Hush, which affects those who fall asleep, causing them to disappear without a trace. Therefore, it's essential not to fall asleep. For everyone.

Our main character in this dystopian world is called Katja, and she has found various ways to avoid sleep. For example, she has an alarm that beeps very loudly when she is about to fall asleep, and she can also use alchemy to make a liquid that keeps people awake for longer periods of time. She has to make this every day to avoid falling asleep and it's made from plants, and she sings to the liquid to give it the right vibrations. However, she only has time to make one a day, and since she is looking after another woman named Amma, who is out in the post-apocalyptic city, she is under a lot of pressure.

It's her job to sneak through the city to find Amma and give her the rare cure for sleep. However, there are others in the city who have also found ways to stay awake. These people are not exactly good people, but rather broken people who stay awake through pain or similar means. For example, there are Pain Eaters, who hang themselves on hooks to experience pain so they can stay awake. In addition, there is a faction called DTM (Delta Transport Ministry), which is a paramilitary faction that enforces a form of law that they themselves have invented. It's all quite bizarre, and the world seems super cold, very depressing, and utterly terrible. It's this world that Katja ventures into to find Amma. The world is terrifying, and the story is equal parts horror and mystery. It works brilliantly, because when you scratch the surface of this sinister city, truths emerge about why people disappear. It's exciting and dystopian without a doubt, but it also piques your curiosity in countless ways.

Katja has a problem in that the liquid that keeps her awake gives her visions and causes her to experience these psychedelic elements, which are both trippy and frightening. In addition, the game also features these nightmarish sequences, which are video clips of people lying in chairs with tubes all over their bodies. If you think of The Matrix, you're not far off the mark.

All these different elements create a captivating atmosphere and a world that is both exciting and terrifying to venture into. I dreaded every time I had to sneak around the ruined streets, because there were dangers and terrible experiences around every corner, but there was also a lot of beauty to experience when you least expected it.

So I can easily and elegantly tick off the setting, character development, and basic narrative premise as developer Eyes Out hits the mark here, but of course that doesn't matter if the game is boring to play. The game is basically divided into two parts. As you move around the gloomy city, you have to solve puzzles in order to progress. Doors must be opened, switches activated, and people tricked. Katja has no way to defend herself, so her only weapon is that she is a small person who can hide from the people who want to kill her. These sequences are very nerve-wracking and reminiscent of similar sequences in Alien Isolation. If you are discovered, you die. It's no longer a matter of "if," but "when," which places Sleep Awake alongside the aforementioned Alien experience, or even Outlast. It's a good idea to sneak around all the time, but you can also run, which I did at times, mostly to run to the other side of a door and close it in front of one of the terrible people who were chasing you throughout the game. In addition, you must also keep The Hush at bay, which appears through distortions in the environment and through Katja's mental decline as she moves further and further towards the truth. It's fantastic and at the same time quite frightening. You feel a chill run down your spine when you hide from the sinister enemies, and they don't see you, so you have the opportunity to sneak to safety. It's horror at a high level.

However, the puzzles can also make you break out in a sweat, because sometimes you have to solve them while under pressure to avoid being discovered. Most of them are fairly manageable, but when time pressure and sinister enemies are added to the equation, the puzzles become somewhat more challenging. That's okay, though, because you get enough chances to solve them if you get caught.

There is one more star in the game that deserves a mention and that is the sound design. The sound is creepy, and you can hear a constant humming and whispering as you sneak around The Crush. And are these sounds coming from you, or from threats in the area? The music was created and designed by Robin Finck from Nine Inch Nails, not that it means much to me, but he clearly knows what he's doing, as you can tell throughout the game, because wow, the sound is scary, but also quite fantastic to experience. Put on a good pair of headphones, dim the lights in the room you're in, and get ready to feel the horror and all the crazy and cool sequences.

These are supported by a cool graphic design, where grey and depressing vistas are replaced by psychedelic effects and landscapes from one moment to the next. It's high-class horror, and I "enjoyed" every moment of the atmosphere.

So can I recommend Sleep Awake? Yes, absolutely. Admittedly, the game is definitely not for the faint-hearted, who don't like being as powerless as Katja is at the beginning, but if you like exquisite dystopian horror atmosphere, then this is one of the best games in the genre since Alien Isolation, in my opinion. In any case, I was on the edge of my seat the whole way through.