Platform: Xbox One

Developer: Krillbite Studio

Publisher: Krillbite Studio

Release Date: June 2, 2016

Genre: Horror Adventure

Nerd Rating: 8 out of 10

Among the Sleep takes the survival horror element of an under-powered main character and cranks it up to 11, by filling its starring role with a snot-faced two-year-old.

It’s no secret that a toddler’s bread and butter is being absolute crap at doing anything but drooling all over a brand new onesie. There’s some evolutionary principle at work here that charms the pants off people in regard to the inept misadventures of what I like to call “the undeveloped us.”

The survival horror genre has always been known for pitting a relatively weak protagonist against its supernatural creatures.

When I say “weak,” keep in mind that video game convention allows that a gunshot wound may be repaired with what must be a band-aid contained in a med kit (ladies and gentlemen, Doom Guy).

Contrast this with the likes of pioneers of the survival horror genre – Silent Hill, for example, sends poor, hapless Harry out into a foggy world of angular anthromorphs and demonic dogs. Harry is only armed with a highly breakable pipe and a severely limited supply of bullets that this unskilled gunman may or may not be able to use to down his targets.

Well, what’s more defenseless than a toddler?

This convention makes many aspects of the game more challenging than you might expect. Movements are generally free of finesse and coordination, and to go faster than a toddle, you have to crawl. Just opening a door can be a trial.

Events begin to unfold on the very second birthday of our footy-pajama’d avatar.

Just when you thought mom sending the “choo choo” full of cake into your yap is as scary as things will get, there’s a knock at the door, some heated discussion, and your vision spazzes out – baby is upset.

Then, mom drags you upstairs and leaves you in the crib for a moment. Things have already gotten unsettling. You just never realize how truly eerie a child’s room can be. Everything that furnishes the room is innocuous, but there’s an edge of darkness to it. Just the décor. The aimless gaze of stuffed animals and cartoon-like adornments on the walls, to say nothing of the angular house design.

Then, your teddy bear, named Teddy, crawls out of the toy box and says hello, before suggesting you go someplace really dark to see something that’s cool.

You go into the closet, which through child-like imagination, becomes a vast, dark maze. Coats hanging high seem to bear down on you, becoming ghoulish, overbearing spectres. The closet seems endless. It’s so dark. Teddy says it’s scary in here, and he doesn’t think he likes it.

Does this sound utterly insane yet?

Needless to say, by the time Mom finds you and puts you to bed, things are already so very fucked up. When you awaken in the middle of the night to groggily see Teddy drift off, seemingly pulled by his leg, down the hall as the light clicks off, it’s beginning to seem par for the course.

You wander the unbelievably dark and creepy house, and hear what seems to be distressed yelping down the hall. It seems to be coming from the washing machine.

 

Into the Unknown

This is Among the Sleep at its most creepy – very near terrifying. Before you even know what the rules are, you have been left with the task of wandering a dark, scary house on your own as a toddler.

The theme continues to work well as the puzzle elements that comprise the bulk of the game emerge. There’s something about creeping around this early stage before you even know what to expect or how far the game is willing to go in the fright department, that makes the very collection of possibilities almost unbearable.

Hell, I’ll admit I had to take a little break after entering the spooky closet with Teddy.

Naturally, things let up a bit. The first real stage has you collecting memories, in hopes of somehow using them to bring your mother closer. By now, the world has lightened up some, becoming a childish amalgamation of the house environment and various playground/outdoor areas the child must have seen at one point.

Other stages have your defenseless toddler hiding from monsters as you work your way across dark, spooky terrain.

 

The Mechanics of Footy-Pajama’d Adventuring

As mentioned earlier, our hero is particularly fresh-faced, and not great at life yet. Indeed, when Teddy first pops out of the toy box he tries to strike up a conversation, before relenting, “Not too good with the talking yet?”

This leaves us at the helm of an intentionally clumsy and uncoordinated avatar. This makes an adventure out of the act of, say, opening a door. First, you’ll have to prop up on something, since door handles are generally higher than the hands of toddlers.

After unlatching the door this way, you must press against it, and it’s a slow, unsure movement, which makes sense when you consider that one of your recent mental developments is object permanence

It makes sense that crawling is faster than the taxing, new mechanic known as walking, but to do much of any interacting with the environment, you’ll need to be standing up. This cumbersome reminder never lets the player forget that you’re in the pajamas of a slobbering child.

It must also be noted though that, by the same token, Among the Sleep‘s toddler is truly the navy seal of toddlers, able to army crawl through narrow passages and pull him or herself up on higher surfaces. Maybe the kid follows along with Mom’s P90X DVDs.

Teddy is the voice of reason, offering direction and following along everywhere you go. He spends most of the game perched on the back of our teething two. You can “hug” him, he tells you, and you’ll feel a little safer. Essentially this makes Teddy into a dim lantern, which is useful every now and again in the dark world of Among the Sleep.

Interestingly, Teddy was initially supposed to be the antagonist in Among the Sleep, which explains an initial feeling of lack of trust, and a slightly sinister air around him.

 

Infantile Puzzling

Since Among the Sleep‘s protagonist’s head is still under serious development, puzzles naturally aren’t terribly cerebral. They’re relatively simple sets of tasks that mostly involve hunting for pieces and hiding from monsters.

The game has had some criticism leveled at it on account of its puzzling scheme, but to me the rather simplistic and occasionally nonsensical tasks come together in the way that might make sense to a relatively new brain. They integrate well, and drive the story. And for the most part, this game’s job is to tell a story.

And a well-told story Among the Sleep certainly is. In this regard, the game is nearly flawless. Without spoiling too much, themes of abuse, abandonment and addiction are effectively touched on. Seeing these elements through the eyes of a toddler is genuinely fascinating, and it takes some time to figure out what must actually be going on in our poor babe’s world.

It’s interesting when you as the player can understand things that seem abstract to the character. Additionally, you’re able to notice things that won’t have significance to the baby you’re controlling. In the very first scene, observant players may notice the wedding ring tan line where Mom’s wedding band used to be. These touches are ingenious, and pulled me right into the world.

All this winds us around to an ending that comes as something of a surprise, although there’s been enough evidence by the finale that you’re really just looking for confirmation.

Among the Sleep isn’t perfect, but for a story so well told and mechanics this reviewer found quite clever, in my mind it’s a definite win. It doesn’t have the same scare factor of it’s genre’s bigger siblings, but neither does it try to. The distorted and infantile perspective keeps the gamer guessing as to just which of the game’s events are truly supernatural, or colored by a struggling young mind grasping at straws to make sense of his or her environment.

It should also be noted that Among the Sleep is on the short side. I plowed through it in what must have been fewer than five gaming hours. But what a great five. I virtually couldn’t switch it off.

Note: Doc Croc wrote a great review of the PS4 version, you should read that here.