no sleep for sole DEMO is available
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no sleep for sole is a surreal survival horror game about mental illness and abuse. You play as a young boy named Sole who stays awake at night to protect himself from the monsters he sees around his home.
Features:
A detailed, distur...
no sleep for sole is a surreal survival horror game about mental illness and abuse. You play as a young boy named Sole who stays awake at night to protect himself from the monsters he sees around his home.
Features:
A detailed, disturbing story about abuse and its consequences.
An hour and a half of content with multiple endings.
Tense survival gameplay that revolves around efficient use of resources.
I really enjoyed this game and I liked the jumpscares and the story. The game did crash a few times, making me do a night over again. And the further you get into the game, the harder it gets, and the less checkpoints you seem to have. Don't do that to me! I want checkpoints! If you can see through the frustration and want a fun, scary and challenging game, this is the game for you. I don't know about the multiple ending, though. I didn't even know what ending I got, so how would I know what to do to get another outcome?
In other words: this game is an umpolished gem!
5/5 8.5/10
Spoilers in entire review!
This is a hugely underrated and underplayed game, what a truly moving and well told story of abuse, depression and self harm because of an alcoholic parent.
I honestly sit here a bit overwhlemed and incredibly sad, but in a good way, after just having finished it.
Its a game that make it to my personal list of hidden gems and tops my most memorable games.
The storytelling with all the white noise, the heart pounding and loosing your friend because he cant understand the terror of what your going through daily was incredibly well done.
Im in awe of everything the dev did here, I am actually a bit speechless.
I love checking out games with none or very few reviews or players to find out why. Sometimes you understand why and regret your curiosity, but not in this case, more often than not they are games that are misunderstood and not appreciated for what they are and this time my late night scouring one day payed off.
As someone who grew up in a household with alcohol, abuse and neglect, this game hit me hard.
How he lie awake afraid at night and have to worry about how much of a drunken rage his parent will be in and having to hide under tables from the horrors in his house. Even the ppl who grov up with 2 loving parents and has never been bullied at school or beaten up, will understand and feel what some ppl go through and how it affects your behaviour at school.
Thankfully I never did any self harm but that is likely because I had a few good friends who stood by me in all my teen years, and a little sister to keep my attention on.
I dont think my rating and review is affected by my personal experience with this tho, the game IS really good despite its short length and I sat glued to the screen for the horror and good story telling it was. It was so surreal and uniquely made!
Only ppl with no capacity for empathy and understanding would dismiss, and misunderstand, this game imo.
The sounds, visuals, notepad and text stuff was all great! How the monsters work and their jumpscares were great too.
And the scenes in between at school and how you are drafted onwards in the story
was well executed imo.
The later part with the father having a drunken rage in the kitchen smashing bottles while you hide under a table was immersive and make you feel what children of abuse go through.
At first you will likely be confused and die a lot untill you learn to time and focus on the right monsters first. But the game is short, checkpoints at every in game hour passed, area very small and a notepad with all you need to know.
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ⓘ
𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐲𝐨𝐮 𝐧𝐞𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐨 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐛𝐞𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞 𝐠𝐨𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐢𝐧:
As already mentioned, visual images of physical violence and self harm, with a rock and cutting. The father hit him with brute force and bottles as well as mental abuse.
If you cant handle this even in this visual form dont play it.
You cant rebind keys, but the keys are few and the game simple in terms of gameplay and movement and the area very small.
WASD (no arrow keys for the lefthanded sry), Ctrl, Space and left/right mouse. When in active preset story stuff you cant exit to menu; just spend another few min and you will be able to.
If you exit too fast right after starting it, the game wont be saved, but the game can be finished in about an hour or so, and once you get past the start stuff, checkpoint saving is very frequent.
The starting screens warns that stereo headphones are required. This is not true, you can play it fine without, just make sure your volume is high enough. Some good stereo speakers is a plus tho to better hear footsteps etc, but my regular decent speakers was plenty okay for me.
There is just a few settings, vsync, resolution, and for such a simple short game it did have a bit of unoptimized stuttering that nothing I messed with would improve on. But it was not too bad and its plenty playable despite that so that wont make the difference.
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𝐖𝐡𝐚𝐭 𝐝𝐨 𝐈 𝐝𝐨:
Follow on screen hints and read the notebook each new day (4 days total).
Get used to hiding under tables when the big bad monster (your father) stomps around, and you running from door to closet to window to keep the monsters at bay by shutting them out.
You do this by holding down Space to shut the curtain, the door or the closet in their face and hold Space to keep it closed for about 5-10 seconds. Check with your light if its gone before you move on to the next.
Your flashlight is very limited so only use it in fast clicks to check each spot for active monsters. Which makes it a whole lot more fun and challenging :D
Once you get familiar and know the sounds and how long they can stay for, this is not that hard to manage. In the start it takes a bit before new ones spawn, in the last days it goes a little faster.
In the end you need to watch out more for your father and stay hidden for longer untill he goes away, this can get you a few times if you forget to check the couch to see if he has left it.
Some monsters can wait a bit, some yuo better take care of first. Windows can wait a bit, closet and doors not for too long or they get you. Prioritise your father approaching, dont wait too long before you hide and dont crawl out untill the footsteps are faded enough. You need to get a feel for this yourself with how long you can wait for.
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What I really loved here was how the dev managed to merge the panic attacks into 2 different things depending on day or night time. Perhaps coincidental and just something I see, but during the day you see him being told to hold his breath for 6 seconds to calm down, and during the night its him shutting the door or blinds on that same 'imaginary' fear (apart from his actual father ofc) for the ~same amount of seconds.
Monsters, and fear, dont live under your bed or in your closet, they live inside your head.
But thats okay.
Im okay.
---
Would so love to see more from this dev and the price is fair despite its short length!
Made with the ClickTeamFusion engine and no analytics, ty for this.
🐧 Arch Linux EndeavourOS
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