Ever heard of the computer game “Sleep Is Death”?
I hadn’t.
Then I ran across this article.
Here’s a brief excerpt:
A lot of game critics you talk to will tell you that, after making a career of playing games, it takes a lot to impress them. But that’s not exactly the truth.
Perhaps I shouldn’t speak for them, but I know for me that all it really takes for a game to knock my socks off is that smallest yet boldest of features: A single great, new idea. I’m not talking about squishing together the dual-stick shooting of Geometry Wars and RPG elements and hoping for the best. I’m talking about an innovation that takes a single step back from the whole idea of what video games are and reapproaches it in a way that feels utterly fresh.
Sleep Is Death is just such an idea.
Anyone who knows me knows that I’m a gamer. It’s my anti-drug, as the kids would say if those dumbass commercials actually caught on with them like the government wishes they would. After reading that bit of the article above, my interest was piqued in much the same way as it was when I first heard about minecraft.net.
Sleep is Death is an art game somewhat, but not just that. There’s a lot to it. It’s made to be played by two players, anywhere in the world, on Windows, Mac or GNU/Linux. Here’s a bit more:
Sleep Is Death is an online game for two players, one the narrator, one the player (for our demonstration, Rohrer took the former role and I took the latter). After connecting via the IP address that Rohrer gave me I was thrust into a home with two pixel people that could have been lifted from the catalog of Sierra adventure games circa 1987. They were my wife and daughter, they were thirsty and they needed my help.
With a little experimentation I found I was able to move, speak and interact with the objects and people of the world using text commands. When a troubling news report about drought started blaring from our TV, I clicked it, typed “turn off,” typed that our daughter didn’t need to see that sort of thing and then clicked to confirm my decisions. A few moments later, the image on the TV disappeared and my wife thanked me, admitting that she couldn’t handle more news. The game was able to react flawlessly to any speech or commands I was able to throw at it, because it wasn’t a game at all. It was Rohrer.
For the rest, check out the full article. Then move on to the main site @ sleepisdeath.net Yeah, I’m telling you what to do. I’m pushy on this.
In the article, Justin McElroy says the pre-order price is $9. Unfortunately, that was only before April 9th, so the price has gone up to $14. For that amount you get an access link for two people to download the files, the Windows version, Mac version and full source code bundle which can be compiled on GNU/Linux. It also includes all future updates. If this game gets as big as I feel it could, now is the time to get it.
Another thing I really like about it is that it saves each turn of a game session so you can go back through and read it like a book.
If you would like to see samples of what I mean, you can view the author’s adventure with the game’s creator, the creator’s own intro/walkthrough, or check out what the community has done here and here.
You can watch videos of tutorials here to see how things are accomplished
Needless to say, I bought it. I’m going to try to get my son, daughter or fiancé to play it with me as soon as I have time to spend learning the ins and outs. I was an RPG player before there were video games to play, and I love making up a good story. “Good” being relative. I think they’re good.
When I was showing this to my son he said he knew what kind of game I would want to play. At the time even I didn’t know what kind of game I would want to play, so I asked “What kind?”
“Zombies.”
Hmmmm… I actually hadn’t thought of that. Fun times ahead!
I’ll put together a gallery of our adventures at some point.
If you decide to get the game as well, let me know and we can try to set up some time to play.
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Sidenote: I still haven’t gone through my archives and cleaned up the pointless… especially pointless… posts that lack any redeeming qualities. Therefore, this post will be my 999th post. Wheeeeeee…