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Sleepless is a short, first-person horror game that really cleverly taps into that almost universal and deeply primal fear of being wide awake in the dead of night when strange, unexplainable things start happening around you. You basically wake up, it’s the middle of the night, your room is dark, and you just cannot get back to sleep. The entire game is focused on meticulously building this incredibly tense and unsettling atmosphere as you lie there in bed, powerlessly experiencing these weird, subtle, and deeply creepy occurrences. It’s got a very minimalist design – you’re mostly just looking around your room – and it uses sound incredibly effectively to make everything feel just… off and deeply unnerving.
The core gameplay mechanic is deceptively simple but brilliantly effective: as you’re lying there, desperately trying to drift off back to sleep, you have to make choices. Do you keep your eyes wide open, trying to catch a glimpse of what’s making those sounds, or do you shut them tight and hope whatever it is goes away? Each choice you make can lead to different creepy experiences, subtle shifts in the environment, or slightly alter what unsettling event happens next. The game really leans heavily into psychological horror, skillfully preying on that innate fear of the unknown and what might be lurking just out of sight or in the shadows of your own room, rather than relying on cheap, startling jump scares to get a reaction.
Sleepless isn’t a long game at all; you can experience everything it has to offer in a very short amount of time. However, it is incredibly impactful and manages to create a profound sense of unease for such a brief experience. It’s truly amazing how well it crafts a feeling of vulnerability and creeping dread with so few elements. If you appreciate horror that explores those primal fears – being alone in the dark, the unsettling feeling that you’re not quite as alone as you thought, and the vulnerability of your own bedroom becoming a source of terror – then this one is a brief but potent little nightmare that will likely stick with you long after you’ve turned off the screen.