Psychological horror can be one of the hardest genres to get right. Developers either stumble and make a game that just seems too gimmicky to scare anyone, or they manage to hit the sweet spot and create something that's more than just terrifying—a horror game that'll stick with you. And from what I've seen so far, Eyes Out's latest game, Sleep Awake, does exactly that.
My hands-on preview for Sleep Awake saw me enter the ever-shifting world of The Crush about midway through. The protagonist—Katja—had to make her way to a location, bypassing hordes of violent cultists to find the one person she cares about in this deteriorating world.
This was a stealth mission: Katja is navigating through broken apartments via rickety impromptu bridges, holes in walls, and decrepit elevators, all while making pit stops at almost every source of cover there is—that may just be my way of playing.
The cultists don't have a particularly harsh line-of-sight—perhaps that's thanks to their ill-fitting gas masks—so if you're careful, keeping to the shadows and making use of all the cover there is, you can weave your way through them without many issues. But that doesn't mean it's not terrifying. Creeping around corners or getting stuck between groups of bloodthirsty enemies isn't exactly pleasant.
One of the worst moments happened when I was hiding under a desk, surrounded by cultists, in a dark room, far away from safety. In my hubris, I thought I was safe under the desk. I even jeered at passing enemies, joking about how stupid they had to be to not find me, only for one of the cultists to suddenly crouch down and stare directly into my soul. My heart skipped a couple of beats as I raced through the apartment and darted through a little hole in the wall.
Unfortunately, cultists aren't the only horror Katja has to deal with. The whole world is enveloped in chaos and fear after some strange power starts causing the disappearance of everyone who falls asleep. And now survivors are left scrambling to find an answer, conducting reckless experiments and following painful paths to stay awake.
There's even another group of cultists that believe the only way to stay awake and safe is to constantly inflict pain on one another. Sounds like a fun bunch whom I can't wait to encounter later on.
So Sleep Awake has the scary stealth missions down, but that alone doesn't make for a stellar psychological horror experience. Funnily enough, what makes this game so eerie are all the beautiful pauses sprinkled between the horror.
Amid crawling through dark tunnels, hiding from cultists, or finding images of twisted creatures painted across the walls, there are a few moments of peace. This could be anything from alleyways full of iridescent light, bright sunshine creeping through the cracks of old apartment buildings, or the otherworldly land of the Fathom—all provided small chunks of beauty among the horror.
Instead of getting bogged down in the dark pits, constantly showcasing horrors to the point that the player ends up getting smothered in a depressingly horrifying story, Sleep Awake manages to strike a fantastic balance between terrifying and beautiful, thanks to some beautiful locations and some unsettlingly pretty psychedelic scenes.
One sequence springs to mind where Katja is trapped in a locked server room, and in trying to find a way out, she triggers some sort of dream sequence where reality and her mind mesh together. The end result was just as confusing as it was unnerving as the floor collapsed, making way for floods of water that rose as she tried to clamber out to safety. I did make it out just before the water swamped my lungs, but it was still a bit of a close call. It wasn't the nicest experience, but I have to say, it did look really cool.
This is what I'm excited to see more of: psychedelic dream sequences, which are disconcerting but too cool to look away from. I'm sure it'll only get weirder and more terrifying as Katja spends more time navigating the death cults and trying to stay awake in a crumbling world—oh, and the pain cultists better haunt my nightmares.
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