Sleep Awake

I know what it feels like to desperately want to sleep. A medication mishap left me unable to sleep for three or four days. I laid in bed each night trying to make it happen, then drifted through the following days struggling to focus on things like work. It started being painful after a couple days, and by the end of it I was scared to take those meds again. Sleep Awake, a horror-themed narrative adventure from Eyes Out and Blumhouse Games, showed me a situation in which that painful experience, stretched out and compounded over days, months, or even years, would be aligned with survival. In ...

SLEEP AWAKE is a deeply artistic game that feels like navigating a beautiful yet eerie dreamscape. It’s a bit light on gameplay aside from its eerie stealth sections. But with a haunting atmosphere of psychedelic visuals, otherworldly sounds, and creepy FMV moments, it’s got style for days—or sleepless nights.

In the last city on earth, the only known inhabitants are terrified to go to sleep. The HUSH will come, leaving behind nothing but an echo of their pain. This city, The Crush, is ruled by a malevolent group hellbent on rooting out all whom they call heretics. You are Katja, the last member of your family, desperately trying to survive by using concoctions you brew to stave off sleep. Everyone must sleep, eventually. Over the course of four hours in SLEEP AWAKE, Katja will fight to survive, un...

As creative collaborations go, the combination of Spec Ops: The Line’s Cory Davis and Robin Finck from Nine Inch Nails is as enticing as it gets. When Sleep Awake was first announced, the names involved left me anticipating a thrilling and subversive narrative backed up by a thumping industrial soundtrack. The actual game we got certainly ticks those boxes to some degree, but is it another success story for Blumhouse Games after the excellent Fear The Spotlight?

Sleep Awake has an interesting premise, and makes nice use of full motion video to assist in blurring the lines between what's real and imaginary. It's just a shame that it's not as engaging to play as it should be. And it's not all that scary, either.

Sleep Awake is a solid game whose story, visuals, and audio design are excellent. The experience is going to have you invested in it from start to finish but isn't likely to have you returning back to it once you're done. That's because of a relatively simple gameplay loop that focuses on traversal and puzzle solving over outright horror, making this an examination of a complex premise that doesn't push its boundaries far enough to stand out.

Sleep Awake has a great premise and certainly knows its creepy imagery, but its fiction is too dense and the mechanics feel a bit played-it-all-before. Compared to contemporaries like Still Wakes the Deep, Sleep Awake struggles to set itself apart when it comes to cinematic stealth horror, even if some late game imagery begins to impress.

Sleep Awake is absolutely stunning visually and feels like walking through an art installation full of heavy themes and commentary. Combined with the impeccable soundscape crafted by Nine Inch Nails' Robin Finck and some of the best world-building I've ever experienced in a sub-10-hour video game, it's a title that will stick with me for a long time. Some occasional subpar stealth sections and an obtuse puzzle or two are the only blemishes on an otherwise incredible journey that had me riveted from start to finish, with a story and main character that were incredible to witness. I want more of...