Chronicles of a Sleepless World
The world of Sleep Awake has survived a catastrophe after which sleep ceased to be a natural part of human life. Anyone who enters the delta phase, deep sleep, disappears without a trace.
What exactly happens to those who fall asleep, no one really knows. In place of the missing, there remains a so-called void shadow — an echo that allows you to hear the last phrases and thoughts of a person before disappearing. Some consider it a form of death, others speak of a transition to another state, while still others see in what is happening a heavenly punishment or a harvest of the "chosen" in the name of a higher purpose. Be that as it may, the main rule here is extremely clear: you can no longer sleep.
The action takes place in the city of Crash — the last stronghold of civilization, if that word is even applicable. In the middle of the desert, it simultaneously resembles ruins and slums, where familiar social structures have long collapsed, giving way to sects and groups. Formal power over the city is held by the militarized organization ODT — the Order of Delta Transport, but beatings, sweeps, and the removal of people to special centers can hardly be called a humane way to cope with the crisis.
Other groups practice their own, sometimes radical, methods of combating sleep. The "Pain Eaters" seek salvation in self-torture, the "Mechanics" use electric shocks, trying to simulate the delta phase, and the main character Katya belongs to those who rely on pseudo-scientific herbal infusions prepared using occult rituals — for which she has to pay with a distorted perception of reality.
The game begins in her apartment, which least of all resembles a home. Rather, it is a refuge and a laboratory at the same time. A distillation apparatus, vessels, bundles of plants and fungi, pots, mini-greenhouses, books, notes, and a constantly buzzing alarm clock, standing guard in case Katya's consciousness decides to turn off.
The initial task seems simple — to prepare eye drops against sleep for an elderly woman named Amma. But fatigue takes over: at some point, consciousness slips away, and Katya falls asleep right at work. Here, the player first encounters Fathom — an intermediate state between sleep and reality, where space changes and distorts uncontrollably.
In one second, Katya is standing in front of a lighthouse in the middle of the desert, in the next — she finds herself on a runway, then — on a railway. In this shaky world, she meets a mysterious woman named Het, who calls herself a guide. Who she really is, the game prefers not to explain, and only later do individual hints begin to form a more complete picture.
The return to reality is abrupt — the alarm clock literally pulls Katya back, and the apartment regains its familiar outlines. Fathom crumbles, leaving behind anxiety and a feeling of instability. Having finished the preparation, Katya drips the solution into herself — in order to get to Amma and not fall asleep on the way.
The screen is filled with kaleidoscopic effects, feverish FMV inserts, and abstract images — a side effect of staying awake at any cost. These techniques not only convey the state of consciousness, but also allow the game to stitch together different spaces, instantly transferring the heroine from one section of the location to another. When the visions dissipate, Katya finds herself already on the streets of Crash.
From the first minutes, the city plunges into a depressing atmosphere. In the distance, a child's cry is heard, strange noises and the sound of ODT agents' batons hitting someone's spine. Everywhere there is ruin, darkness, and suffering. This world is both frightening and fascinating with its plausible hopelessness, and exploring it could be incredibly interesting — if we were not faced with a banal "walking simulator."
Sleepwalking on Autopilot
I admit, I am reluctant to label games as "walking simulators" and usually try to note the details that give the process more weight than simply moving from point A to point B. But Sleep Awake is exactly the case when there is almost nothing left outside of "walking."
Formally, the game offers several familiar elements: item search, rare interactions with the environment, conditional puzzles, and fragmentary stealth. In practice, however, it all boils down to linear movement along a pre-laid route, where it is almost always clear where the player will go, where they will stop, where they will look, and when they will move on. It's all the more amusing that the developers still hung yellow ribbons along this single path — as if it were even possible to get lost here, although any deviation ends in a dead end.
Even episodes that should create a sense of interactivity more often slow down the pace than provide meaningful action. Find a fuse, open a door, insert a key card — that's almost the entire range of activity. "Puzzles," if you use that word without embarrassment, are solved at the level of direct observation: the desired object lies literally under your nose and, as a rule, is highlighted by light or other maximally obvious ways. Katya regularly says aloud the next step, reducing the chance of making a mistake to zero.
Throughout the entire playthrough, the player is really given something to think about only twice — in episodes where you need to find three symbols in the room and arrange them in a certain order. This is the most difficult task that the game is capable of offering, so the word "puzzles" is appropriate here only in quotation marks.
The situation is slightly better with stealth, but it is also served in minimal doses. There will be no more than four full-fledged stealth segments in the entire game, not counting episodes where it is enough to simply sneak past one or two opponents. The routes of the enemies are monotonous, the field of vision is limited, and the punishment for a mistake is symbolic. In the worst case, the player is thrown back to the beginning of the segment, forcing them to replay a minute of gameplay. In the best case — after being discovered, you can simply run away and reach the next autosave point. Even if the enemy catches up, the game will resume after the stealth section.
Of these episodes, only one is memorable — in the middle of the campaign, when the player encounters an inverted version of the "weeping angels" from "Doctor Who". You cannot approach these creatures and you cannot look at them, while they move freely around the location and even teleport. If an enemy is nearby, the camera automatically focuses on it, even when it is behind you. If you linger for a second — the character dies.
The second relatively tense fragment appears almost at the very end. Here, blind monsters using echolocation oppose Katya. You have to hold your breath and bypass the shards scattered on the floor, but in practice, these opponents are slow enough to simply run past them.
As for the main storyline idea, the fight against sleep, it is almost not reflected in the gameplay. There is no limited resource of wakefulness here. There are no reaction tests when falling asleep. There are no mechanics that would logically flow from the concept. The developers could have forced the player to actively resist sleep, but instead, the heroine suffers from drowsiness only in the plot — in strictly scripted moments, when the screenwriter needs to transfer her to another space.
You might expect that the weak gameplay is compensated by a strong story, but this does not happen either. The concept of a world without sleep, possessing impressive potential, ultimately turns out to be wasted.
Camera on Legs
The plot is partly catchy — just enough to get the player to the finale. The problem is different: having reached it, you realize that the efforts were in vain.
The developers seem to deliberately replace intrigue with uncertainty. The story is fragmented and mysterious, but this mystery turns out to be illusory and quickly turns into pretentiousness and pseudo-intellectuality. Katya moves from one location to another, first to deliver drops to Amma, then in search of another way to cope with the threat of sleep. Throughout this path, the game persistently gives what is happening a significant look, creating the illusion of hidden meaning — which is simply not there.
The lack of a meaningful plot directly affects the main character. Despite the four to five hours spent with Katya, her personality remains on the periphery. She does not develop, does not make significant choices, and does not experience internal transformation. This is not a character, but a camera on legs — a guide to the world, but not a part of it. The game almost does not work on empathy, does not reveal character, and the emotional reactions of the heroine sometimes diverge from what is happening. The state of chronic exhaustion can still explain this, but it is difficult to justify dramaturgically.
By the finale, the narrative literally comes to naught. Interest is maintained by inertia, but the plot itself dissolves into a series of symbols and visual allusions. The denouement comes suddenly and leaves the feeling of a prologue to something more, as if the story is just beginning to gain momentum and there should be a large-scale action for dozens of hours ahead. Instead, the credits begin.
As a result, the main paradox of Sleep Awake is that the game speaks in the language of metaphors, but does not offer what these metaphors should hide. Behind the images, fragments, and visual poetry, a gaping void is discovered, and the final twist completely devalues the idea, reducing it to vulgar science fiction.
Dreams in High Resolution
Against the background of weak gameplay and a castrated plot, it is especially noticeable that Sleep Awake is doing much better with the visual side — the game really knows how to impress with images. The locations are diverse and carefully built, and the decorations are filled with small details that help to feel this world. Dilapidated interiors, inscriptions on the walls, abandoned premises, dust, and garbage work on the depressive atmosphere of decay and decline, in which people continue to exist by inertia — until they fall asleep and disappear.
In general, the level of visual performance can be called moderately high. The game shows the use of some standard Unreal Engine assets, and there are also low-quality textures — for example, on brick walls. However, Sleep Awake rarely creates situations where they have to be deliberately examined up close, so it is not particularly striking.
From the point of view of optimization, the game works stably. On a system with an RTX 4070 Super, Sleep Awake holds over 110 frames per second at a resolution of 1440p and maximum settings. However, owners of more modest configurations should take into account that the project does not support modern scaling technologies — neither DLSS nor FSR in any form — so it will not be possible to magically increase performance.
The sound design of Sleep Awake deserves special praise. The soundtrack, created by Robin Finck, turned out to be truly atmospheric and original. The music accurately emphasizes what is happening: gloomy industrial motifs, synthesizer lines, and ambient weave into a sound canvas that either presses with silence or explodes in climactic moments. The soundtrack can be minimalistic or expressive, but at the same time it remains holistic and does not seem monotonous.
All this enhances the immersion in the unstable state of the world on the verge of sleep and reality — and at the same time leads to another disappointing thought. Perhaps it was worth simply cutting all these FMV clips and abstract images into clips and releasing them as an album by Robin Finck. It is unlikely that Blumhouse Games, which financed the development, is satisfied with the peak online of 98 people in Steam, which means that even if there was some kind of idea behind this art performance, we will most likely never know where exactly it led.
Diagnosis
Sleep Awake is another example of a game in which the idea is much stronger than the execution. The concept of a world where sleep has become a deadly threat is impressive in itself, since it opens up a huge space for gameplay experiments and a dramatic plot with philosophical and psychological motives.
However, the developers failed to turn this idea into a working system, and therefore the expressive psychedelic aesthetics and promising idea are overshadowed by banal game design, in which the mechanics are nominal, and the plot is devoid of dynamics and internal development. The atmosphere works, but does not achieve its goal, replacing emotional peaks with spectacular but empty visual techniques.
In four to five hours, the game does not offer either deep answers or real challenges — after the credits, there are more questions than satisfaction. Personally, it was difficult for me to find a good reason to recommend Sleep Awake to anyone, especially at full price. Except perhaps for lovers of art performances and arthouse cinema — and even then with a big stretch. There is a short demo version on Steam for about twenty minutes: you can try it, but it is worth considering that the full version ultimately makes an even weaker impression.
And my verdict is simple: even with a discount, I would seriously think before buying. No one will return the time spent on Sleep Awake to you.