Sleepover
A Review by Paul Harrington
Download
Here
You may be asking, "Does Sleepover
really warrant two articles in one issue?" I think it does. I think
that as long as different authors have something different to say from
one another, there should be no problem with covering ground that's
already been tread upon. In this case, JSH and myself have rather
different things to say about this game. There's one thing in common
between this review and his feature; we both thought Sleepover
was great.
JSH's piece may be useful to readers who have already played the game,
and to people who like to think about the deeper value of games. I'm
not going to go there with this review. If you're saying, "What's this
game about sleeping, and why should I play it?" hopefully this review
will convince you that you should.
Sleepover
is the winner of the 2009 Halloween Contest on Castle Paradox. It's
bizarre, it's hard to classify, and it's one of the funnier games I've
played in a long time. Playing Sleepover
is
the video game equivalent of watching TV with someone who keeps
flipping from station to station. Graphics, sound, and genre flip
around seemingly at random as you wander a surreal landscape, and I was
amused every time.
I should point out that most of the game is voice acted, and quite
competently so. However, as in OHR
House Heroes,
the music volume drowns out some of the voice work, and since not all
of the voiced scenes have text to accompany them, you're going to miss
some of what the game has to say, and that's unfortunate. The lack of
subtitles on the voice acting is probably my only significant issue
with this game, and it would be easy enough to fix.
This might not mean much to people who aren't familiar with how OHR
games work, but Sleepover
uses pixel-based movement, rather than tile-based, and it does so very
well. Your character controls well, and it adds a much more
professional feel to the whole thing. There are a lot of little tricks
in this game that will feel really clever if you've made games using
the OHR engine, but I strongly disagree that it's a game that can only
be enjoyed by OHR game makers. If you enjoy surreal art and humor,
letting yourself get lost in a game's world, or simply interacting with
completely bizarre situations, you'll probably enjoy Sleepover.
Being a hip-hop fan will help too, because several of the songs in the
game are original raps relating to OHR business. You might not get all
of the references, but it sounds good and it just gets funnier if you
do.
Visually, the game's great. The "real" world is well drawn, with
surreal colors draping everything in sight. The "game worlds" you visit
look very much like real games, and look entirely distinct from the
rest of Sleepover.
You don't have to be an OHR game designer to enjoy this; you just have
to enjoy games, and be up for experimental ones. The gameplay consists
of simply going from point A to point B, with strange things happening
along the way. You may encounter a random battle once or twice, but
they're of no consequence, and you continue on, win or lose. The fact
that a custom battle system was developed for this minor interlude is
extremely impressive in and of itself.
This is definitely a game you should go into fresh. Don't spoil
yourself on specifics before playing, and if you want to analyze it,
wait until you've finished playing. Sit back and enjoy, because there
really aren't many rides like this among video games. It feels a bit
too smug for its own good at one or two points, but this is easy to
ignore when the overall package is such a great experience. Give it a
shot with an open mind, and go nuts.
