/ Cory Doctorow / 5:46 pm Wed May 30, 2012

First-person horror game from a two-year-old's PoV

Krillbrite Studio offers a preview of "Among the Sleep," a first-person horror game viewed from the point of view of a toddling two-year-old:

Among The Sleep invites you into the mind and body of a two year old child. After being put to bed one evening, mysterious things start to happen.

Being played in first person, the game let its players immerse themselves in a child's limitless imagination. This is a perspective we all have a distant familiarity with, but few can clearly remember what it felt like.

In the borderland between dream and reality, surreal creatures and diverse environments will present you with both physical and mental obstacles that challenge your creativity.

Among the Sleep (via Super Punch)

25

  2. I was honestly frightened when the lights started flickering and the drawers all came out. Good design/implementation. 

  3. Seriously impressed. That got me at a deeper level than zombies and vampires can, I think I’d be very uncomfortable playing that.

  4. Get the knife, baby!

    This looks great, but that name is terrible. Among the Sleep? It doesn’t mean anything.

    1. Depends on how one defines sleep I guess, as a collective noun it works for example.

      1.  Can you use the phrase in a sentence? Maybe I’m not as well phrased in the English language as I thought. I’d really and truly like to know how it makes any kind of sense.

        1. “Binky looked at what he had typed: ‘Among the Sleep’, and realized that by using a typewriter and not having any correcting fluid, the title of his first novel would never be ‘Among the Sheep’; he would just have to roll with it.” 

  5. I like the potential for looking at obstacles in a whole new (or very old) way.  Steps, or climbing up onto a chair, could be very challenging.

    1. Yeah, I was thinking baby takes stairs really well; when I was that age I was like Pooh, going thump thump thump down the stairs.

      Funny story: my Dad built a really well-done wooden baby gate: a large sliding piece of plywood to slide across the door. I remember using it reflexively up until my twenties when we moved. 

  7. There’s the practical element of starting out equipped with a diaper. Just in case things should get *really* scary.

  8. You can easily win the game by just hiding under the covers until morning. When I was a kid, I was certain I’d be okay even if a nuke went off outside the window, as long as I was under my everything-proof blankets.

  10. Yep, that was terrifying. The toddler angle is terrific. It ups the anxiety of lack of agency and helplessness.

  12. So how long till the first chest high cover?

    Seriously, this looks amazing, cant wait to get my hands on it. 

  13. The sort of supernatural drawers pulling out and stuff broke the illusion for me although the suspense was quite thrilling till that point. Somehow giving a  strange feel to everyday happenings or even something as serious as a burglary seen through the eyes of the child could be more powerful way of conveying this type of game.

  15. This looks terrifying! What platforms will it  be available for?
     
    Kids that age would still get frightened  of strange events, but I don’t think they would have a “this isn’t hapening” response like adults would have when things just don’t compute. A toddler would just accept what’s going on at face value.  
     
    I remember having a dream during nap time when I was about three years old. Little wooden toy monkeys came out of the dresser drawers and climbed up  and down the dresser and onto the shelves. The funny thing is that they moved like they were in a stop motion animation. I just took it  for granted that toy monkeys could play by themselves like that. My mother was a little perplexed when I kept asking her where they were.

  17. Loving the concept, but I can’t help feeling that the movement should be more, well, toddler like. I don’t remember the last 2 year old I saw running down the stairs sideways / leaping off chairs :) I think it would add to the atmosphere having to crawl down stairs slowly and being extra careful not to fall off stuff etc.

  20. I remember my nephews at that age. they started learning to walk at about that age. ( as opposed to crawl ) and that as soon as they had learned that they kept learning to climb on stuff  to reach whatever they were trying to reach.  I also remember they werent afraid of anything at that age and that they loved to tear tv programmes into bits and break stuff, running about anywhere like little noisy tornadoes. they didnt have any concept of stealth and saw no problem in waking up folks in the middle of the night.   They became more timid and impressionable as they grew up.

Comments are closed.