For a one man team, Silence of the Sleep is a huge accomplishment, and I give full credit to Jesse Makkonen for creating something as big and intricate as this by himself, but that doesn't erase its many flaws. There are plenty of good ideas here that feel held back by questionable design decisions and a somewhat unfocused vision. Perhaps my expectations were too high going in, but I feel like it could have been so much more than it is.

On the surface, this is a brutally hard adventure game. The puzzles can at times be obtuse with clues that in some cases are so incredibly vague one wonders how the developer expected the player to reach the solution at all. The design is very reminiscent of early adventure games where hand holding was certainly not the norm and the player had to put a lot of thought into things. As such, there is a great sense of accomplishment when you've figured out that particularly puzzling obstacle. The problem comes in with the survival horror elements, however. Make no mistake, Silence of the Sleep is as much a survival horror game as it is adventure. Death comes early and often, but a bit too often in my opinion. Something that a lot of developers fail to grasp is that while death is indeed scary, frequent death is not, and only leads to frustration and a break in immersion. This is where I feel the game began to lose me.

Chapter 2 started off great, but by the end I wanted to crack my keyboard in half. Not only are you dealing with some pretty difficult puzzles, but you're continually interrupted from your train of thought by monsters that randomly appear, chasing you into hiding to wait them out lest you end up splattered on the wall. Don't get me wrong, I have no problem with difficulty in games, but it's a fine line to walk, especially when you're asking not only for difficulty in thought but also in mechanics at the same time. If you're giving me a puzzle to solve, give me the time to solve it, forcing me to flee and continually reset my thought process is not fun or scary, it's rage inducing.

Things manage to ease up once you move past that particular area, but then we go from extreme frustration to extreme boredom in Chapter 3. Just when you feel like you're finally getting somewhere with the story, things slow to a crawl and you're forced through mundane tasks for far too long before the action picks up again. I understand that Makkonen was steering the narrative in a particular direction, but the pacing is uneven and thematic tone all over the place. I can't help but feel that the game would have been more effective as either an old school adventure with crazy difficult puzzles or straight survival horror with a bit more mechanical complexity. Juxtaposing the two genres reveals the flaws in both while at the same time stifling the narrative flow.

All of that said, the presentation is phenomenal. There is plenty to admire from the unique puzzles to the interesting mini-games that are sprinkled throughout, most of which are stylistically implemented. And then there are segments that pull you out of the standard gameplay and have you crawling through drain pipes or slowly shambling down a hallway that gets darker and darker with the disgusting and disturbing sounds eventually drowning everything out. These segments are excellent at conveying a sense of foreboding and claustrophobia.

The atmosphere is artfully crafted with sound design that brings this horrific world to life. Some of the audio distortions were extremely disturbing in an almost hypnotic way; there's nothing freakier than hearing a baby's cry morph into almost inhuman moans...creepy stuff. But above all, the artwork. My God, this is a beautiful game in the grittiest, ugliest sense of the word. Jesse Makkonen designed everything himself from the ground up, and that should be commended. His eye for interesting and emotive imagery is spectacular with some of the most artistic graphical design I've seen in an indie title.

The story is also fairly good and doesn't quite go in the direction one might expect. Although the end felt a little rushed and some elements seem to come out of left field, it gives you plenty to think about and possibly a reason to play through it again as there are clues spread throughout that will help further puzzle together what really happened.

And that's where I think I'm the most disappointed. Silence of the Sleep is a horror game that tells an interesting story in a unique and creative way, yet its deficiencies prevent its massive potential from ever fully realizing. And that is why I must ultimately give it a lower score despite really wanting to support this developer. I would recommend the game to those who are interested in an difficult experience, but if you're looking for the next great horror story along the lines of Silent Hill or even The Cat Lady, unfortunately, Silence of the Sleep is not it. Given more time and perhaps another try at the genre, however, I believe Jesse Makkonen may yet get there.

Just what I need after playing Depression Quest, playing a suicidal character known as Jacob Reeves who attempts to kill himself. Instead of ending his existance, he loses his memories and tries to figure out who he is and what happened to him. Silence of the Sleep is a psychological horror game that mixes things up constantly for a refreshing experience.

Story(Pacing)

+Good blend of mystery/horror
+Characters are intelligent and react realistically

This game paces itself well by allowing the player to talk people and walk around the environment without the feeling of tension during the horror sections. Players will fetch them items, solve puzzles for them, or simply chat with them in order to better understand whats going on and solve the mystery.

Basically the game is broken down into two sorts of segments, mystery and horror. The mystery segments are based on figuring out your situation by interacting with the people around you. While the horror segment is solely based on surviving your encounters by using your environment to your advantage.

The characters you meet throughout the game actually act somewhat reasonable and intelligible. The first one being a paranoid guy with a gun asking you to go into another room so that he feels safe leaving, by locking the door on you and passing through. The characters have their own quirks about them, this is especially true in later chapters where the mystery segments are longer.

Mechanics

-No difficulty mode
-Movement can be slightly improved

+ Can interact in 4 directional places despite being a 2D game
+ Puzzles codes are randomized
+ Save Feature is tied to in-game objects (no autosave)
+ Multiple interactions for detecting enemies
+ Multiple Choices in dialogue

Equipping inventory items is important to remember when interacting with the environment. I made the mistake of trying to open a door without having the key selected. Which was a sign of clear brilliance on my part…

You can get key items ahead of time which allows you for example to double interact with a person and complete the task to obtain the reward instead of having to go back and forth. This can happen on accident, during the mystery segments of the game but not during the horror ones.

Keys override each other, meaning that you need to click one direction at a time instead of multiple keys. Going from north to south however is a tad more complicated than left to right. When I went into a room and saw the monster I clicked the opposite direction but since I didn’t click left or right first my guy refused to look that way (since it was a south door and I was looking forward). An improvement to how your character reacts to the keys you press would be welcome, though they only been a problem really once or twice due to close calls. Normally, it’s not an issue when walking left or right out of a room just north and south.

You are offered some choices in the game, like accepting the drink from Bar Mcon though i was rather cautious to accept something from someone with con in their name. Other choices in the game seem to really not have much effect on the ending of the game from what I could tell, which I could be wrong, but it seems more like the walking dead approach where it simply affects your relationships with the characters.

There are multiple ways to tell if a enemy is near the exit of the room by hearing, looking, or having a alert appear. This changes depending on what type of exit it is, if the door has a peep-hole then you are able to look through as an example. It’s nice that the interactions are always changing throughout the game and like the enemy AI does not remain the same. Each chapter feels like a refreshing experience from the previous and never makes the lazy mistake of repeating itself.

Adding a limited amount of records for saving in a new difficulty mode might give the game a bit more challenge that people would like. It's a minor negative that hardly effected my enjoyment of the game it's simply something nice that could be expanded on later.

Visuals (Atmosphere)

+Fluid animation
+Music/Sounds follow events well
+Transparent objects make world easily visible but keeps complexity
+Characters have color to highlight importance

Having alot of background characters can be confusing unless you differentiate them from the important characters who actually further the storyline. In Silence of Sleep this is done by coloring a unique aspect of the person,whether it be their tie,hair, or other characteristics of them.

The sounds from enemies to the crackling of the fireplace is all well done and really help you either feel fear or warmth. The sound just strikes the right balance, and never feels tedious or out of place. It has a certain type of buildup and explosiveness that is missed in quite a few games at certain points.

Slow motion occurs when you hide behind crates which affects the sounds everything produces. It can transform sounds from sounding relaxing to something of horror. The visuals are also affected when hiding and make everything appear red.

Enemy AI

+Progressive AI

Hiding within the environment and sneaking past enemies is the only way to ensure survival.

The game is more of a hybrid between thriller and horror. There are some encounters where they will show a viewport of the monster to give you enough time to react, by finding a hiding place. While other encounters you simply have to pay attention to the sounds they make and use the exit mechanics to your advantage. Think of Chapter 1 as the tutorial for survival, the various encounters you face involve enemies traveling a certain distance and you gauging when to leave rooms or not.. Once you are thrown into the abyss that is Chapter 2 you will face with enemies with better AI that will chase you unless you hide yourself away from them using the environment.

Conclusion

The game manages to deliver a great experience by making each chapter have new enemies and puzzles, sounds that are effected by what your doing, environments that are well done, with a memorable story that comes together nicely by the end.

Chapter 1 is actually pretty good. The atmosphere and the environment is nice and it promises a decent horror adventure game. Just the controls are really clumsy, for some reason you can't turn 180° when facing the wall, you first need to turn left or right. Also the hero can run only for about 3 seconds before getting tired.

Starting with Chapter 2 you get randomly attacked by monsters insta-killing you on touch, often giving you little chance to avoid them. Yeah I know you can learn their paths and how to avoid them, but at the same time you are supposed to find your way in a labyrinth of same-looking rooms, find hidden items and solve complicated cryptic illogical puzzles. Even after an hour of playing when I knew the level pretty well, I still got regularly killed resetting my progress to the only savepoint in the level. Also it forces you to spend a lot of time just waiting for the monster to finally go away (over and over and over again). This is not scary at all, it's just annoying, frustrating and boring.

Chapter 3 is completely different but not better. The monsters are gone but so is the atmosphere. This chapter consists of a bunch of dumb fetch quests (find a lost bunny, get a toilet paper, ask everyone some question, ...) and running around trying to find out what the game wants you to do next.

Chapter 4 and the monsters are back. This time it's actually a bit better. There are two savepoints in the level, plenty of places to hide and a MAP! Finally! I realized why I had liked Amnesia so much. Unlike this game Amnesia didn't throw a monster on you every 30 seconds and it didn't kill you every 2 minutes.

Chapter 5. This one consists of a ton of cutscenes (this game has more endings than The Lord of the Rings trilogy) and pointless "walk right" sections. The biggest problem is that there is no savepoint and the cut-scenes and dialogues are not skippable! On my first playthrough the game crashed after a few minutes, returning me back to the end of Chapter 4. So after restart I had to watch the cutscenes and click through the dialogues again. Then I got to a level so dark I could barely see anything. I heard a telephone ringing but couldn't see it so I continued walking right and suddenly I got instantly killed by a monster. Back to chapter 4!! The third time I didn't miss the telephone booth but the game crashed again. BACK TO CHAPTER 4!!! Finally I was able to finish this damn game. The ending was... ok, I guess. Not very surprising, I expected something like that, but it could have been worse.

Overall: Not many games were able to make me scream on the screen like crazy. Silence of the Sleep did it several times. Both thumbs down.

Game is very pretty. Atmosphere isn't bad. Puzzles are relatively easy and not all interactable items are apparent (sometimes you need to randomly search places to find things). What really brings down this game is the shoddy writing (... ... ... ... ... ...), crap controls (so unresponsive, especially when a monster is chasing you), lack of autosaves, and the monster dynamic. Having to -constantly- run and hide and WAIT for long periods of time while moving from room to room completely breaks the immersion. It soon becomes more frustrating to deal with the monsters rather than scary, especially since death means you restart from your last save point, and the ability to save (using gramophones) can be few and far inbetween.

I got this game for a dollar. I wouldn't pay more for it. I put two hours into the game and know from the experience that I will never touch it again.

wow. Silence of the Sleep is a unique game. furthermore, it's a good game

the aesthetics is definitely the high point in this game; it has Jesse Makkonen's trademark dark palette of blue-violet-red mixed with gray and black (sounds weird, works really well), the characters are real life human-modeled dichromatic silhouettes, the movements life like reminiscent of Prince of Persia (but better), the character photos in the dialogue boxes are real faces reduced down to a carbon copy with BloodNet feels. the backgrounds are stunning. the music is weird but very high quality. the atmosphere is at times really tense, with most of the game falling under the horror category with clear Silent Hill influenes (especially SH3), however, the game is more than that; it has a moving story that's fed you piece by piece as you progress with characters surrounded by mystery but all with their own personality

it's not all positives, though. the game is hard as f-ck at times, too hard, unenjoyably hard. some of the objectives are dim at best, a lot of puzzles are not easy, many items are hard to spot, and certain gameplay features are confusing even after the tutorials. the controls could really do with an overhaul, that this game doesn't have controller support is more than mildly surprising. overall, this game could have been vastly improved with some play testing (yeah, i'm looking at you, Jesse - hit me up)

as for the gameplay, i guess it's best described as a Siren in 2D; hide, or get brutally murdered. i love the death sequences, right in line with 2D trial and error games like Another World

the first two or three levels give you the impression that it's going to be the same thing dragged out throughout the game, but that actually isn't the case; the game keeps surprising you with new environments and what i thought were novel little mini games that are part of the story progression. also, first time i ever remember having an NPC whistle as the sole source of music. annoying as hell! but A for innovative

Steam's binary grading system doesn't leave room for much finesse, so:
10/10 aesthetics
2/10 controls
9/10 atmosphere
8/10 story
3/10 difficulty

in brief, it's more an experience than a fun game to play, more a work of art or a story to be told that an enjoyable gaming experience. if that's your cup of tea, and you can appreciate rough gems and quirky gameplay elements, then get this game
great story, characters, atmosphere, art - not great gameplay, too hard and not intuitive

go Finland!

I hate giving this game a thumbs down, since it is clear that it's heart is at the right place, and the premise, graphics and gameplay bare more than a passing resemblance to one of the greatest pc horror games of the last decade - "The cat lady", but after a promising start the game takes a head-first plunge. "Silence of the sleep" is an adventure game at it's core, and no matter how many "spooky" instant-death inducing fog monsters you throw at the player, you can't change the fact that the core gameplay is all about solving puzzles. Sure, instant death is no stranger to adventure games, but you know who else is no stranger to them? game saving.
Yes. This game commits the most atrocious sin commitable in an adventure game - sparse save points and instant deaths. You see, this mechanic, which works well in action oriented survival horror games is perfectly plausible, but not in an adventure game. It's a terrible decision to force the players to solve puzzles they already solved just because they ran into a fog monster and died. Solving puzzles is a one time affair, it's fun when you figure it out, tedious when you have to do it a second time, and game-deletion reason when you are forced to do it a third time. There's no logical way to explain this poor game design choice, other than trying to artificially prolong the experience, because unlike action oriented games, where encoutering enemies again and again raises the player's skill level, here it just raises their furiosity level. I'm sorry, but unless the developer somehow decides to add a save button, I can't recommend it at all.

Silence of the Sleep is a strange little game.
It's advertised as a psychological horror game, and generally that fits, though it has its share of creepy visuals as well, mostly the horrible monsters that inhabit its surreal world. Your mileage may vary on whether they are geniuinely scary, but the game creates a tense and unsettling atmosphere. Do yourself a favor and devote real time to playing it in the dark without distractions.
The story is a bit wandery and you will be confused if you don't read absolutely every line of dialogue, but it isn't a major detractor--it gets its point across all the same. You'll find yourself wondering where things are going to go next even after you've stopped playing.

The control scheme of the game is by far its weakest point, however, with a "semi-2D" plane which still requires some 3D navigation. Turning is imprecise and sometimes lags, and this can make a frustrating difference when you're trying to dash into another room to escape a monster. The game would have been far better off with click to move controls like most point-and-click adventure games--and at its core, that is what Silence of the Sleep is. There is no combat, all you can do is run away and hide. Most of the puzzles are fairly straightforward with a surprising lack of the usual "adventure game logic." It's not a brain teaser but you will have to stop and think from time to time.
The game could also have used a proofreader. There are some noticeable spelling and grammatical errors here and there.

In sum, if you won't be unduly bothered by its sometimes irritating controls and want to try something different, give Silence of the Sleep a try. Let yourself be immersed in it, you won't regret it.

You know, sometimes I wish Steam would allow neutral reviews in addition to positive or negative, because that's what I wanted to give Silence of the Sleep.

On the one hand, the game is thoroughly entertaining 90% of the way through, with an intriguing plot, terrific atmosphere, and the horror element nailed through and through.

Then there's the conclusion... it's like the author just didn't know what to do with the story at that point. I won't, of course, spoil anything, so you'll have to make do with this vague description, but I found it thoroughly unsatisfying, with greatly implausible last minute elements introduced almost out of thin air.

So there you have it; I'm pretty ambivalent about this game.

Now here's a real curveball from the horror genre. Silence of the Sleep looks very much like another Lone Survivor-style side-scrolling horror game, and it is, for a little while. Then it turns into something very, very different, and the change is not altogether unwelcome. I'm going to have to spoil some things about how the game is laid out, because it's very hard to give a proper recommendation without speaking on the game's true structure. However, if what I tell you sounds good, spoilers shouldn't really hurt the experience.

You play as Jacob Reeves, a very sad man who opens the game by chucking himself off a cliff. However, instead of Kratosing through a pantheon, he ends up in a strange, dilapidated hotel with a man I can only assume is the bartender from The Shining. They have a nice talk, and then a shadow thing tries to find and eat Jacob. So, we're off to a pretty good spooky start, right?

The elevator out of the hotel takes Jacob to a black-tie affair in a swanky ballroom. Suddenly the game turns into an adventure game, with Jacob chatting with guests and trying to work out some odd puzzles. There's still a dreamlike veneer over everything that ties back to the hotel opening, but the tone is completely different. After the ballroom is another horror segment, and a very effective one. But after that the game launches into its longest chapter, which has almost zero horror elements throughout. It's nearly all dialog and dealing with NPCs, with hardly even any puzzles to work out.

The end takes it back to horrorland and ties it all together, but all told the game is way more adventure than horror. And that rather works to its benefit, actually. The horror segments can be clumsy and frustrating, with hiding mechanics more touchy than those in Knock Knock and the same navigation problems that plagued Lone Survivor and Claire. I will admit that the spooky bits have some very effective monsters and moments, but playing through them quickly became more tiring than the dialog-heavy parts, strangely enough. The characters of Silence of the Sleep are all well-written and fully-realized, each with goals and hangups to explore. They also make it easier to know how to move the story forward than the scurrying about darkened hallways.

All of this is presented in rich, detailed backdrops for the silhouetted characters to break out against. Silence is a very good-looking game, with some clever uses of its 2D style. The sound design is solid as well, and while the controls are a little stiff, it won't matter much outside of fleeing monsters. I'm not a big fan of this particular story archetype, but Silence of the Sleep had the presentation and the polish to keep me engaged all the way through.