Ahead of the Game - Among the Sleep is atmospheric helplessness now in mobile form
Are you afraid of the dark?
- Explore the horrors of the world around you in creepy first-person
- Play as a helpless two-year-old
- Enhanced edition features extra content on mobile
It's all about pushing your horror tolerance to the limit in this week's Ahead of the Game series, where we tell you all about a new mobile endeavour that's playable in one form or another despite its unofficial launch.
I'm the biggest scaredy cat in the entire world, so I still don't know what came over me when I decided to give Among the Sleep a go. Maybe I thought that the fact it's all about little kids means I can somehow take it - but thirty minutes into the early access trial and I already knew I'd made a terrible, terrible mistake.
Among the Sleep is a horror adventure told from the eyes of a two-year-old toddler, and the first-person POV doesn't help at all. It's bad enough that I'm playing as a helpless child with no weapons and absolutely no means to defend myself against the abominations lurking in the dark - does it have to keep playing that ominous soundtrack too?
Honestly, it's almost as if Snapbreak isn't responsible for my beloved Lost in Play and the lovely TOEM: A Photo Adventure - but then again, they're to blame for Silt too, so I guess I can understand their penchant for the eerie and the unknown.
The mobile version offers a handy touchscreen interface, by the way, but from my experience, I did encounter a few clunky controls here and there. Picking up stuff with the Hand icon can feel incredibly wonky at times, which doesn't help the omnipresent feeling of helplessness all throughout the whole ordeal.
But then again, I suppose that might be intentional on some level - you can't play a horror adventure without pressing the wrong button in a moment of panic, after all.
So, how do you play Among the Sleep?
Despite all the atmospheric horror, the mobile enhanced edition does offer some lighthearted content in the form of selectable pyjamas. Sure, you wake up scared and vulnerable in the middle of the night, but when your jammies are on-point, it might not seem so bad.
There's also apparently a new museum level too, along with never-before-seen footage, which I wasn't able to get to with the free trial. If you feel like you're brave enough to find out, Among the Sleep is available to try now on Android.
