Psychological horror can be one of the hardest genres to get right. Developers either stumble and make a game that just seems too gimmicky to scare anyone, or they manage to hit the sweet spot and create something that’s more than just terrifying—a horror game that’ll stick with you. And from what I’ve seen so far, Eyes Out’s latest game, Sleep Awake, does exactly that.
My hands-on preview for Sleep Awake saw me enter the ever-shifting world of The Crush about midway through. The protagonist—Katja—had to make her way to a location, bypassing hordes of violent cultists to find the one person she cares about in this deteriorating world.
This was a stealth mission: Katja is navigating through broken apartments via rickety impromptu bridges, holes in walls, and decrepit elevators, all while making pit stops at almost every source of cover there is—that may just be my way of playing.
The cultists don’t have a particularly harsh line-of-sight—perhaps that’s thanks to their ill-fitting gas masks—so if you’re careful, keeping to the shadows and making use of all the cover there is, you can weave your way through them without many issues. But that doesn’t mean it’s not terrifying. Creeping around corners or getting stuck between groups of bloodthirsty enemies isn’t exactly pleasant.
