144 - Among the Sleep

[matt]

Did anyone else back Among the Sleep or get it when it came out last week? Here are my thoughts in video form! I think the video is relatively spoiler free, but no promises!

[RightClickSaveAs]

You summarized my own feelings of the game really well. I liked the game a lot, and I think the Gone Home comparison is probably a lot more accurate. It wasn't quite a horror game like I was expecting, but it tells a really good story.

I loved the way they used symbolism and the creativity of the levels. I didn't quite get the meaning of all the sections either, but decay is definitely an overarching theme, which I think symbolizes the fear and trauma caused by the child's parents, his world and home are being torn apart by their problems and he doesn't know how to process it.

I did run into a bug where this bridge was supposed to extend when you move a box out of the way, it didn't work the first time and I was stuck wandering around until I restarted the section, but I didn't find anything else game breaking.

[matt]

I tried running it on my Brix Pro, and I upped the graphics settings, and basically it messed up not rendering the menu, so I couldn't start the game. I gave up and tried on a different computer. (I'm glad I did because the graphics requirements were very steep as seems to be a common problem with Unity games)

During the level you mentioned, I ran into weird object culling bugs where most of the world would disappear, and I'd be stuck with a red plane. If I ran through the red plane, more things would appear, but it was really annoying.

[gagaplex]

I saw its release on GOG and thought it looked interesting. Didn't buy it yet, though. I'll probably get it eventually, so I don't want to read too many spoilers.
I don't think it has to be super scary as long as it's moody/spooky/atmospheric. Not everything needs to be outright scary if being uncomfortable/sad/weird is the idea.
I remember Sanitarium, an adventure game about weird/spooky/horrific fantasies. It's amazing and I love how it delves into the mind of the character we're playing as. But even though it has some awful imagery, it's not scary. And that's fine.

[matt]

Yeah, I don't think the game needs to be scary. However, the kickstarter campaign and the alpha build sort of lead me to believe that it would be, which is why I mentioned it.

I think if you start playing it expecting something along the lines of Gone Home, you'll enjoy it more although I don't think it is as good as Gone Home, but Gone Home was quite excellent.