Among the Sleep: Review
As the protagonist of this horror game, you are a two-year-old child.
The game opens in the kitchen with your mother and yourself celebrating your second birthday.
While taking a bite of your birthday cake, there’s a knock at the door. Your mother is visibly disturbed and goes to answer it.
You are left to your own devices as she does. An argument then ensues in the distance, the camera shakes and adds a wobble effect to highlight your character’s feeling of fear.
As she returns, you calm down. She’s carrying a present for you.
Eventually, you’re brought up to your bedroom while mum goes to answer the phone.
This segment serves as a bit of a tutorial as you discover the controls and movement.
You eventually find the present that arrived, it was a teddy bear that acts as a guide for the rest of the game. The bear guides you to the closet, where it instructs you to get inside and close the door. In the dark you discover that hugging the bear makes it produce a warm glow, lighting your way.
You also discover that the closet appears to be considerably larger on the inside.
After making your way out of the massive closet, your mum finds you and brings you to bed.
From that moment on, the atmosphere of the game changes.
You’re woken from your slumber, your crib is on its side, and your mother is nowhere to be seen. It’s up to you and your teddy to find your mother and avoid the monster that seems to be stalking the house.
Eventually, you find yourself in a playhouse with a doorway at the rear that leads into memories…
The game has four chapters. The first main chapter brings you to the playhouse, along with your first memory, which is used to unlock the path to the second memory.
The second chapter takes place in a dark playground, with a couple of puzzles to solve before completing the chapter and retrieving the memory needed for the next door.
If I’m being honest, this was the weakest of all four chapters.
Essentially you were following the path from one end to the other. Along the way, you were finding what was needed to get there.
That aside, the rest of the game does a good job of enticing fear. Chapter three gave me my first proper view of the monster. It was here that I discovered that our character was in some kind of peril. We got cornered with nowhere to hide, and we got caught.
From this point on we start to question the origin of the monster and the entire premise of the game.
Without giving the story away, the rest of the game had me hooked. Right to the emotional ending.
You may be tempted to give up soon into this game. But I do recommend you keep going.
This review has not been promoted by the developer, other than providing the game for us free of charge. It is entirely my own opinion.
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