I played Deep Sleep

Once again I find myself playing a Scriptwelder game. And honestly I love coming back to this creator. Last time it was Don't Escape, and now for their original horror game Deep Sleep.

Deep Sleep is a pixelated horror game that starts out looking like an escape room. You find a key behind a vase and open the one locked thing in the room. That drops a locked box into your inventory, but I was a little distracted by the world dissolving around me to pay much attention to that.

There are a few doors that lead different ways, and out one door you hear a phone ringing. Find the phone and answer and all you get is a whispering voice telling you to wake up, over and over again. Though by this time you've likely worked out that you were sleeping. Maybe even by looking at the title of the game.

Make your way from room to room, collecting and using your items to solve the puzzles to find a way to wake up. And you're not always using your items. In the back of the furnace you have to turn off, just use your pointer to wipe away the ash and get the door code.

As you get further, twice you encounter shadow entities. The first one runs from you, but the second comes right for you. There's a bit of action for being a point and click game, and I actually got a bit of a start from the shadow entity charging me.

The pickaxe you get helps you knock down a wall, and it's here that I got a serious tingle, feeling like I was reading The Outsider by HP Lovecraft. Knock down the wall and you find yourself on a beach. You came out onto a beach out of a boulder a boulder from at least the second floor of a building. I know it's a dream, but this did give me an odd feeling.

Get what you need and solve the last puzzle. Return to the lighthouse and it's time to end this. There's just a little more action, but you should have a good idea of what to do from context clues alone.

This game is atmospheric, at the beginning it let's you know that you're dreaming but it's a very unsettling dream. The grainy view really helps sell the uncomfortable feeling. There's not too much of a story, but this is part of a trilogy. Much like a Lovecraft story, once you're safe, despite being disturbed by what they saw in the dream, your character decides they have to know more. They go back.

This of course leads into the second game: Deeper Sleep.

This game begins by explaining that since the events of Deep Sleep your character has become obsessed with learning more about what happened. They've been researching and learning more about lucid dreaming, preparing to return.

You start your research only to find that you've fallen asleep and are now dreaming. Time to get to work.

This game builds out more on what it was you were running from in the last game. It does this through notes you hunt down as you play.

Guess where you are once again. Back in the building. Clearly there was more to this than just a dream. It is a little different, but you're dreaming, so it makes sense that things would be different.

There are actually other characters in this game too. A shadowy human looking character reveals that he was the guy who made the call, telling you to wake up. He's not really going to help you again though. The best he does this time is give you a piece of paper, tell you that you must go deeper to hopefully get out of the dream, and warn you against seeing the person on the top floor as they've gone crazy from spending years in this nightmare realm.

You have your goal now, so start finding everything you can.

Once again, the grainy texture helps to give the game a detached feel. Ambiance is the order of the day once more, and with the soundtrack giving a dark ethereal undertone things can get creepy. And the design of the crazy woman on the top floor is unsettling, if reminiscent of The Ring.

There is a little side quest you can do by returning a plush tiger to Cody's bed. There's nothing really story related, but it gave me a warm fuzzy feeling to save this child.

Get a rope and climb down into the well, and find yourself in
The Deepest Sleep

Anyone who suffers from sleep paralysis knows the feeling of the first scene of this game. Stuck in bed with a shadowy figure standing at the foot of your bed. All you can do is watch and have a mental monolog as it comes for you.

So after that nightmare you're sent into the game itself. And this one take the creepiness up a notch. The puzzles I encountered weren't too terribly difficult but limiting your vision each gem you take while doing one of the puzzles makes you more aware of any motion that comes across the screen.

One of the interesting changes is intentionally slowing you down do sneak past certain new monsters. Then add to it having to then rush past and hope you escape it is stressful. Definitely felt more intense to me than the earlier games.

And it is certainly dreamlike as scenery changes and dissolves into another scene. Not all the time as to be gimmicky, but enough to keep you aware that this is all a dream.

The story has a big surprise and a choice to give you two possible endings. I think I chose the right one, and I'll leave it up to you to play this trilogy and make your own choice about what ending you get.

Bonus Game: 400 years

This is an interesting game, you have 400 years to save the world from a volcano. You can move forward in time, but not back. Use whatever you can to solve puzzles (Some will take a long time to solve, costing you precious years.) And slowly make your way towards the volcano.

This is a nice little game that feels very powerful, especially for being so simple. There's a beauty to this pixel game, enhanced by the music. There's not too much to talk about this one, it only takes a couple minutes and can leave you with a bitter sweet feeling. At least it did me.

It's so straight forward that reviewing it further would do little good. But it's so much better than it's simplicity would suggest. I just have to say, try it for yourself.

Feel Free to check out more of Scriptwelder here.

Comments

[Fallout dude 50]

Huh cool