Most of us at some point in our lives have been afraid of what goes bump in the night. If you haven’t? I envy you. Sleep Tight puts you in just that scenario, the sun has gone down, your parents have gone to bed and you’re left alone in the dark and then you hear a noise. Knowing that it isn’t the family cat or dog, you do what any sane kid would do, you hide in your pillow fort and arm yourself with a nerf gun. This people is survival and until the morning comes? It’s full out warfare!
Sleep Tight is a top down twin-stick shooter falling into the tower defense category. This isn’t a bullet hell and it isn’t a shoot ‘em up like Tesla vs Lovecraft. You, and your crazy ideas are all that stand between you and the monsters that crawl out from under your bed or creep out from your closet as you are trapped within the four walls of your bedroom. What’s your goal? Protecting yourself at all costs because if you fall then it’s all over.
Starting off with just one character and then being able to unlock more as the nights move on, you’ll have to survive for as long as you can as there is no other goal. This really made me think back to my childhood especially when we moved across the country when I was now faced with a brand new location, at first my grandmothers with her Darth Vader freezer and I hadn’t seen Star Wars yet, so that was terrifying, and then our new house. Shadows lurked around every corner, the unfamiliar creaks terrified my seven year old self, and like an asshat, I told my brother the boogie man was real and may have hid under his bed at some point. He hasn’t forgiven me yet some twenty odd years later and he let me know as he blew past me as we took turns keeping the monsters at bay.
The formula is simple. After the first wave, which is essentially the first night, you are given a number of suns to spend alongside the stars that you pick up as you defeat the monsters. The next night only begins once you have used all of the suns that you had. Suns are used to build / upgrade / repair couches for defensive barriers, turrets for offensive capabilities and to activate power ups such as shields, speed and extra power from your own gun which you need to fill back up with ammo every so often.
Stars on the other hand are more like “money” that is needed alongside the suns that you pick up in order to unlock new abilities and barricades and often things don’t come cheap so once you get a certain character that specializes in defensive structures, you really see the difference between a normal character and her with the ability to upgrade defenses that much faster and them be that much more powerful. Each character has their speciality and finding the one that works for you will take some time as each has conditions in order to be unlocked.
Getting the hang of what kinds of upgrades should be taken first and the idea between exactly how to use your sun and your stars to the fullest, you’ll be zipping around your bedroom as an unstoppable force that should not be reckoned with. Until you mess up and are taken out leaving you to your own misery as you stare at the results screen blaming no one else but your own stupidity because you thought you could do something. The bedroom while “huge” in a standard person sense as this has to be inside of a mansion, isn’t the biggest in a gaming sense and there’s not really any place to run as the four walls you find yourself in can feel claustrophobic quickly enough.
Because of the size of the battlefield, Sleep Tight is a single player experience but a two person coop would have been awesome and I hope to see it patched in later on with maybe a larger room. Trapped in this room though, one would think that the scenery would be boring or get old but it doesn’t. Giant rug in the middle of the room with four “stations”, you can either try to hold up in the middle of the room or start building couches and turrets into the corners to better survive the nights. Be careful with your setups as there’s no repairing once the sun goes down.
The music, while only really being three tracks, is awesome. There’s the day time slowness while you set up, the nighttime awesomeness electro that keeps your energized as the night moves on and then lastly there’s a the creepy take on the night for every tenth stage’s Blood Moon. This change in the lightning brings out the biggest and the baddest of the monsters and also drags on for much longer than a regular night making you wonder if you really will make it under morning. The bonuses are bigger though because of the length of the star acquisition is always something to look forward to. Buying upgrades for an extra six suns to add to your default or upgraded amount is always a stellar bonus and more than worth it.
Rinse, repeat, unlock new characters and set up bragging rights. Sleep Tight only currently has one mode with a possible twelve available characters. With how much fun it is however there are a few issues that come about while trying to set up your fort or defensive positions. Often when it looks like something should be able to sit side by side, you are stuck staring at red outlines telling you it won’t go where you want it to. It would have been nice to either have a snap to function or a square and hex grid because often what should have been a space to pass through isn’t and so much space can be wasted because of pixels that you can’t see being in the way.
Sleep Tight is a fun experience and a great take on childhood nightmares. I wish I could have been this armed when I was growing up. With fast paced action and great music, I do wish that it had different modes, the ability to start further up or to adjust the difficulty more than by simply switching the characters. I’m hoping for a multiplayer component down the line because either coop or versus to see who does better / lives longer would be amazing!
Game Information
Nintendo Switch
Developer(s):
We Are Fuzzy
Publisher(s):
We Are Fuzzy
Genre(s):
Twin Stick Shooter
Top Down Shooter
Tower Defense
Mode(s):
Single Player
Other Platform(s):
PC
Source:
Provided by Publisher
Article by Pierre-Yves
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