Among the Sleep PS4 Review

Among the Sleep is a first-person horror adventure video game developed by Norwegian developer Krillbite Studio for Microsoft Windows, OS X, Linux, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It was released on 29 May 2014 in North America and Europe for the PC. The PlayStation 4 version's release date was announced to be the 10th of December 2015. I was fortunate enough to do a play through on the PS4 slightly earlier than the slated release. Without ever playing this on any other platform, my opinions and views on this game are purely from my experience with the PS4 edition. Although I could see where the game would lend itself to a keyboard and mouse quite well, however it did translate well enough to the Dual Shock 4.

Among the Sleep for all intended purposes is a horror adventure. Sadly most of the time the horror aspects matched those of the adventure aspect, somewhat lacklustre. It did a decent job of building a climax with the audio but for the most part did not overly deliver any real jump scare or tense moments. This coupled with the aspect of the main character being a 2 year old toddler, you the player could see no real harm coming to someone so young therefore any real sense of danger was abolished.

As with most games of this new wave genre of adventure, the movement bugged me somewhat because it is very slow unless you're in the crawling position. This does make complete sense being a toddler and all, but just no real pace to movement. What really highlighted this was the lack of any guidance when searching for the "key" to the next puzzle or area, you can feel yourself doing laps around the same scenery in pursuit of the last item. There is one major saving grace and that is the attention to detail graphically. Now it definitely is not the strongest graphically driven game but the attempt by the developers to strategically place lighting and other visual obstacles in a manner in which creates haunted looking figures and monster like shapes.

The game is sometimes often too dark for its own good, even with the ability to light your immediate areas by hugging your teddy bear. This lighting ability still felt very restricted with only predetermined areas being able to be illuminated with this function. At times I tried to light my surrounding area, still to be left in complete darkness. While touching on feeling restricted, Among the Sleep did quite a good job of not making you feel restricted in each are whilst puzzles were completed, even though you actually were.



One aspect that was pointed out very early in the piece was almost everything in the environment was able to be manipulated like doors, draws and basically anything not nailed down was able to be thrown around. The fact you had to manually slide a chair across to the door and then climb up on it to be able to reach the handle was a neat touch. Sadly this quickly became a somewhat of a redundant ability after its initial first couple of uses. Don't get me wrong this aspect of the controls was still used, but I think it could have been used a little more throughout the game, this was one of the main aspects that made me feel in control of something that was going on around me.



Among the Sleep had a real "down the rabbit hole" feel to it, spiralling down in pursuit of the child's mother only to be directed by her voice and an animated teddy bear who knew what was going on half the time and no real help the rest of the time. This is delivered in what seems to be distorted memories and from the point of view of a child. Among the Sleep allows us to try and determine how and why things are happening with our own imagination with no real explanation throughout the play through. This in essence is not a bad design at all. Being able to try and quantify what is happening is by far the most engaging aspect when sometimes it felt like I was just going through the motions of playing a game and I guess this is where the real psychology of the game is highlighted.

With the game reaching its true potential in the final moments of the game, it kind of left me wondering could this have been better or at the very least a little more scary than just spooky. All in all I do believe that games like this have a place on consoles but as for multiple play throughs, I don't think it will stand too strong. There is a lot of merit in this game, like its ability to create tension and for most parts deliver visually. Sadly the moments of tension that were created were quickly diffused or tuned out to basically be nothing.

With the exception of a couple of camera bugs and an initial problem with tutorial text, this game has been no waste of time by any stretch of the imagination but I do think it could have a little more punch. If you are looking for 3 to 4 hours of immersion into a world where you're tasked with developing your own overall plot and solving puzzles along the way, then this is definitely a title for you. If you are looking for something fast paced or something that will scare the pants of you, then maybe not. Overall I had an enjoyable time with Among the Sleep. I would love to hear your thoughts which can be put down below in our comment section or you can head across to our Facebook and give us a like and have your thoughts there on this game or anything game related.

Thank you very much for your time,

Red