Awakened Deeply

Adapted from an IFCOMP24 Review

It is far too late for me to inaugurate a review sub-series, as I have done in Comps past. But if I were to, “Sleepyheads” seems like a good one for this year. This is another ‘wake in a sci-fi setting, figure out what’s happened’ joint. This one owes a bit more to Star Trek than Fallout, at least in references. The narrative is a bit more dire than anything Trek went after though. Like maybe Star Trek by Alan Moore.

“CPT Rorschach’s Log, USS GrimDark, Stardate circa 1983. Bodies orbiting ship’s gravity field, their sins and weaknesses swelling to burst into the cold void. Screams swallowed by the endless Dark of space. Dark as it gets. Flushed from airlocks like so much moral waste. Someone, somewhere has their hand on the flusher.”

There are quite a few contradictions built into its setup, implementation and tone. For one, there is an early insta-death that establishes stakes that aren’t really matched by the rest of the game, and does it with the old ‘player doesn’t know what character damn well should know’ trope. (Also, WHY WOULD YOU EVEN HAVE THAT LEVER???) For another, its implementation is gappy - many missing nouns and verbs. At several points, it is unclear whether the game is complaining about verb syntax or unimplemented nouns, which is a real barrier to making progress. You can JUMP on things, but not CLIMB on them, and so on. The tone bounces back and forth between low key atrocity and candy-colored Starfleet uniforms. Sometimes a tone war can produce some very affectingly contrasting moments, but here those moments are kind of firewalled from each other in time, more bouncing around than synthesizing into anything.

The gameplay is pretty standard parser - find/explore/use type of puzzles. They are a mixed bag of integration: some fairly well integrated as these things go, others kind of defying the reality of the setup. I needed the walkthrough a few times, more often to figure out how to accomplish what I wanted, but occasionally (for example the ‘shelf’ puzzle) to figure out a moon logic construct.

The story ends up being a low pressure ‘space corporation conspiracy’ with some adversaries mentioned but only really impacting your puzzle solving once. I couldn’t find a sparky hook among these pieces - the story felt familiar, the implementation fought me more often than not, and its tone never really coalesced. There is a choice to make at the ending, one outcome of which is WAY out of proportion to the actions you took during the game. I never got past a Mechanical engagement with this one.

“You don’t get it. I’m not trapped in here with you. You are trapped in here with me AND THESE TRIBBLES.”
– CPT Rorscahch’s Log, USS GrimDark

Played: 10/7/24
Playtime: 1hr, both endings
Artistic/Technical ratings: Mechanical/Notable implementation gaps
Would Play Again?: No, experience feels complete

Artistic scale: Bouncy, Mechanical, Sparks of Joy, Engaging, Transcendent
Technical scale: Unplayable, Intrusive, Notable (Bugginess), Mostly Seamless, Seamless