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Would you like to jump to your death? How about now? ... now?

  • Caz
  • 07/09/2012 02:00 PM
  • 1389 views
Sleepless Night is a game made in Renpy, an engine I personally have no experience with. From the outlook, the game's art looks to be quite professional and well-made, but the proof of that is always in the playing.

In the beginning, I stepped off of a train with a character called 'Haru' who I immediately took to my house. I was already very fond of the artwork, and I took a liking to the fact that I could pick and choose certain things that I said to Haru. These would change how he reacted to me, though I'm uncertain as to whether they made any permanent impact.

I found quite a few errors in wording and spelling mistakes, but these weren't damaging enough to spoil gameplay. After the first cutscene, I was let loose to explore the room through vigorous clicking. One thing that bothered me slightly was that each time I clicked something to investigate, it asked if I was done exploring and gave me a 'yes/no' option. This was slightly bothersome and could've possibly been avoided with a simple 'done' or 'stop' button.

After a while of looking around, I decided to jump out of the window.. This was a bad idea, because I died. I won't go into detail, but there were quite a few ways to die by looking at certain things or, in one case, not looking at anything. It was getting to a point where I was really struggling to find something that didn't actually kill me. There was something shiny-looking on the window sill, but no matter how many times I tried clicking it, it would just investigate the window instead.

I was starting to go a bit crazy..
"It's a window - JUMP TO YOUR DEATH?!"
"No, no I'm good thank you.."
"Really? Sure you don't fancy it? Changed your mind yet?"
This coupled with the constant asking for whether I was done exploring was starting to get a bit annoying. As a game intended for horror, it was taking away some of the feeling of the environment with the way it seemed quite broken up and disjointed, always asking those questions.

Well, I never managed to find the real ending, but I sure died a lotta times! I enjoyed it, for what it was. I wouldn't say it was particularly scary, but perhaps more gruesome.. The art was really nice, though. My complaints (other than those already mentioned) would be that the boundaries for items to click were far too large. At times, clicking a random part of the desk would activate the events for some books on the opposite side of it.

Because the game couldn't be finished, and because the endings were so final and unforgiving, I'm deducting severe points from this game. But it was very pretty in terms of graphics, sound and music, so I think I'd like to give it a 3. Not too shabby, enjoyed it, but needs a lot of work in the gameplay department. Keep working at it!

Posts

Pages: 1
Thanks for the review! :)
I'll put a "Done" button in the new version, a lot of people complained about that. And sorry about the spelling/wording errors; I'm not a native English speaker and I had no proofreaders.

There's a walktrough on my website if you want to find all the other endings. There are no CGs or other "rewards", though.

Glad you liked it overall :)

EDIT: I love the title of your review. Made me laugh so hard :D
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