Sleepers

How many wolfs whould a wearwolf wolf if a whereweolf whould wolf wolfs?
A Max McGee Review of Sleepers by Avadan

Sleepers is a short but complete game made in RPG Maker XP with very pronounced strengths and weaknesses. Reviewing Sleepers was interesting for me because the creator is strong in all of the areas I'm weak in, and to be honest, vice versa as well. As I suspected from the beginning and confirmed from the ending credits, Sleepers apparently is the second (out of how many?) chapter in a larger story, which you could never tell from its RMN Game Page. Shouldn't the project be called "Sleepers Chapter 2" or something? There is no mention of its sequel status in the game's description either. I don't know where to find whatever sequels or prequels to this game there are, although the first 25% of the game is spent recapping the first chapter.

Story, Writing, and Characters



The story in Sleepers is somewhat interesting (kind of a cross between Nightmare on Elm Street and Power Rangers, in a way) and the characters are not without personality and appeal, thanks in large part to their art. Unlike the last several RM games I've reviewed I was able to play Sleepers to completion and I found the way the story was brought to an end to be basically satisfactory.

This only makes the terrible, terrible, terrible quality of the writing all the more painful. If Avadan's first language is English (as certain lines of dialogue lead me to beleive), shame on him! The quality of the English in this project makes Clest look like William Shakespeare in comparison. It is obvious that not one whit of effort was expended on this area of the project. Punctuation is nonexistent, typos and misspellings are rampant, and the grammar sucks. Of course I'd never take off this many points just for typos. In addition to being badly TYPED the dialogue is also badly WRITTEN, and the tone of character dialogue is often wildly out of sync with the tone of the moment, leading to several moments of unintentional hilarity. (I'm trying to seed every article with at least one TV Tropes link because I want to ruin everyone's lives.)



If these issues had been addressed, this could have been a truly great project. But as it is, this all but sinks the ship. No matter how low your standards for writing are, I doubt you will find this acceptable.

Story/Writing/Characters Score: 1.5/5

Visuals/Audio

Sleepers is a great looking game and a real change of pace from standard RPG Maker fare. Sleepers is a side-scrolling RPG that features clean, cartoony looking graphics that are full of character and personality. The overall style reminded me of webcomics, specifically the kind that use sprites from different games. And indeed this game does use heavily edited sprites from fighting games, against (original?) backdrops. All in all the look that is accomplished is very impressive, and the animation is great (and very, very violent). Everything is working well together here. Well, almost everything. There are occasional glitches that show up involving passability issues on the side-scrolling maps-- basically that you can walk on anything-- but I'll talk about this more in the gameplay section.



The music/sound situation is less stellar but still far from bad. I liked some of the tunes and didn't like others so much (use of sound effects was decidedly average; nothing really stood out for good or ill). My main issue was with the music like some of the dialogue often seeming far, far too upbeat and spunky considering what had just happened on screen, like light comic relief music coming just after I watched a child be torn apart by a pack of wild dogs. (The effect is not as awesome as it sounds, because I am 90% sure it wasn't done with any ironic intent.)

Good use of Dave Matthews Band at the end, although I am not a big fan of them.

Visuals/Audio Score:: 4/5 Stars

Gameplay

Gameplay is the area of Sleepers which was neither awesome nor sucky.

Sleepers is a traditional RPG with some very non-traditional maps. The game is a side-scroller, and you can only move up or down at nodal points designated on the map with white flashing arrows, clearly marking all exits of the map. (In theory, this is great, although there were a few problems with execution. Namely, there was a lag of a few full seconds after switching maps before those white arrows appeared, it was impossible to talk to NPCs you were right on top of but possible to talk to some but not all NPCs (on the same or different vertical levels) by standing on the correct side of them, making it hard to tell who you were supposed to be able to interact with, and finally it was possible to leave the sides of the map or to get stuck on the wrong side of an entrance/exit.) This style of presentation- consistent in the cutscenes as well as the exploration scenes- made the map screens of Sleepers feel very different from most RPG Maker games.



Every other aspect of the game had the exact opposite effect; it was far too traditional, and frankly boring. Everything from the random battles to the RTP class names just made this project feel generic.

Sleepers had a CBS, but it might as well not have. Battles were for the most part, simultaneously boring and laughably easy.

They were boring because none of your characters except for Matt have any skills, and there is no point in ever using his one skill (generic Fire skill) since you can kill every foe except the final boss easily by attacking. The three main characters are retroactively, a Fighter, a Lancer, and a Warrior (maybe a Knight, a Tank, and a Soldier while we're at it??? Where are the rogues, wizards, and clerics?) although they all use the same equipment; nothing. The Lancer punches dogs and dreams to death with his bare hands, the same as the other two, like, literally the same. And let's not think too hard about the fact that teenagers (twenty something) are effortlessly PUNCHING WILD DOGS TO DEATH IN THE REAL WORLD (as opposed to the world of dreams where the game partially takes place).

They are easy because, well, all enemies except bosses die in two attacks from any party member, and every one of your party members gets to go twice before any of the enemies get to attack. Yes, this means that enemies do not even get to HIT you during the frequent random encounters unless you intentionally defend and let them get a hit in. But hey, I far prefer that boring battles be too easy than too hard, and an ATB bar that charges too fast is better than one that charges too slow! The final battle was actually very challenging; hard enough to make me break a sweat, but not impossible, largely because it was one-on-one versus an enemy who had paralysis. It wasn't really a toughy but at least I took some hits and had to heal and use my skills! Er, my skill, rather.

Ultimately, the lackluster gameplay was the most disappointing because of the great potential presented by the original setting! Think about it! If the heroes got different abilities in their dreams than the real world, this game would have rocked!

Gameplay Score: 2/5 Stars

Bottom Line

In a world where I had free leave to work whomever's projects that I wanted to, I would love to rewrite this game to fix the dialogue and make the battles actually interesting. And I would love it if the game's actual creator did the same, because those are the only things holding Sleepers back from greatness.

Final Score (Not An Average): 3 Stars