Among The Sleep
There are games that I play to take my mind off things. There are quiet games where you can lope along, absorbed in the world and delighting in it. There are games where you control the world, moulding it into what you need it to be.
And there are games like Among the Sleep, where everything about it is so beautifully crafted that it pacts an incredible punch that leaves you reeling for days.
Among the Sleep is the story of a child trying to find their mother as they navigate a surreal caricature of their world. Even from the outset, telling a story from the perspective of a toddler is a delightful mechanic and makes the entire world so much more compelling. You crawl through your world - or sometimes walk - navigating spaces that may be intuitive from an adult perspective, but are nebulous and harsh from a toddler’s. The child is accompanied by Teddy the bear who glows when hugged. All told, it’s a reimagining of the mundane that forces you to rethink your own world through a different lens. The horror gets heightened and emphasised, because in this reframing, we’re forced out of the world we think we know, and into the world of a toddler. Our familiar becomes unfamiliar, before it shifts into the surreal.
Children are braver than I am.
I love games that take our worlds and force us to reconsider them. The two games I was mentally comparing this one to throughout were Beyond Eyes and We Happy Few, though for different reasons.
Beyond Eyes and Among the Sleep both derive their fundamental environment from the player needing to navigate the world through a lens they likely do not know. In Beyond Eyes, the main character is blind, and so is the player, and so like in Among the Sleep, the ordinary becomes extraordinary and frightening. Beyond Eyes is not a horror game, but a musing and an exploration of blindness - Among the Sleep takes this idea of forced perspective and elevates it into something grand.
Kitchen or extra fun playplace? You decide!
Because the horror of Among the Sleep isn’t just in the scare chords and the monsters - though trust me, that’s there in spades, and it’s expertly done. Among the Sleep shines because of the dawning realisation that you, as the external player, have as you guide the child towards their mother. Piecing through memories and twisted caricatures of happy places, there will inevitably come a moment when you realise what is going on.
The horror isn’t the game. The horror is the world and the reality it creates.
I had this moment about halfway through the game, where I realised exactly where we were going, but was powerless to stop it. I guided this child along, and I knew that wherever the ending went, it wasn’t going to be a happy one. It meant that when I saw the monster, there was the fear communicated from the child about a scary monster, but also my own visceral feeling, knowing what I was seeing. It hits hard, and it lands hard, and it sticks with you long after the game is done.
This is why I compare Among the Sleep to We Happy Few. There are the surface similarities of being survival horror/action-adventure, but more than that, there’s the deep visceral horror of knowing that it doesn’t matter how you do with the particular challenge before you or if you escape the monster currently pursuing you - that’s not the point, and never was. The true horror is the reality you inhabit and the knowledge that there is no escape. There is only brief mitigation of something you can control before plunging back down into the knowledge that your reality is still there, and always will be.
A screenshot from Among The Sleep
Games like Among the Sleep shift worlds in more than just the physical sense. Most players are not toddlers, and so shifting the world into that perspective morphs it in interesting, sometimes scary ways. You get to explore from a new angle. I’m not sure what percentage of the player base has depression or has suffered abuse, though I suspect it’s higher than the toddler player base. Among the Sleep doesn’t only create horror by making the world physically unfamiliar - it captures the emotion of depression and abuse and sense of endlessness, creating a world that is also emotionally unfamiliar for those who have never been in this place, and painfully, horribly familiar for those who have. That’s what makes it powerful. That’s what makes it stick.
I don’t play many horror games, so take it with a grain of salt, veterans of the genre, but Among the Sleep is a great horror game. Its horror lies in the story it tells, and the perspective from which it chooses to tell it. Its mechanics are perfect for that story, its levels are beautiful, and above all else, it is scary. I can’t recommend it enough.
Developer: Krillbite Studio
Genre: Survival, Horror, Action, Adventure
Year: 2014
Country: Norway
Language: English
Play Time: 2.5 - 3 Hours