Among the Sleep: Enhanced Edition

If there's one thing I know about games, it's that crawling around on the ground is slow and stealthy. That's the lesson I learned from Metal Gear, Splinter Cell and about a thousand other first- and third-person action games. But that's not the case in Among the Sleep: Enhanced Edition, because the star of this game is a toddler. This is a horror adventure where our hero is still a little wobbly on their feet, so getting around the nightmarish dreamscape is a whole lot faster when crawling on the floor. Don't let his small size and inability to form sentences fool you, because this baby has all the right moves.

This is the story of what should be a happy day in the life of a toddler. It's his birthday and his mother has a fun surprise for him -- a talking stuffed animal friend named Teddy. But things turn dark when evil forces abduct Teddy in the night and drag him out of the room against his will. Things only get scarier when the two discover that mom is missing and a supernatural force has taken over the house. This sets up a brief but eventful journey where our tiny hero puzzles his way through a nightmare world to track down memories and find his mother.

Although it looks like a survival horror game at first, Among the Sleep is more about climbing on chairs and opening up doors. This is the kind of adventure where every single part of the game is made harder because of your small size. But this kid is surprisingly good about finding a way to his next destination. He'll move around furniture, fit through air vents, climb opened drawers and hug Teddy to light the way through the darkness. This guy is on a mission, and no banshees, ghosts or locked doors are going to get in the way of getting the job done.

The puzzles are largely of the scavenger hunt variety. An early part of the game will have you looking around a scary, run-down park for a bunch of small statues. And if you like things to be even more on the nose, the very next area has you tracking down puzzle piece. These collectibles will require you to move objects around, find hidden keys, throw balls at glass bottles and interact with the environment in other fairly basic ways. There are no brain-teasers here and pretty much every puzzle can be resolved by spending more time looking around the isolated area.

For as much as I like the creepy atmosphere, I'm not a big fan of the linear stages. This is one of those horror games where there's only one path and the way you're supposed to go is always obvious. If you run into a dead end, the solution is usually to move furniture around the room or locate a barely hidden key. There are a couple times when you'll need to avoid supernatural creatures, but even those bits are painfully straight-forward and shallow. There came a point where I was playing the game more for the story than the adventure, which is a little disappointing.

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Among the Sleep fares better when it comes to the story it's trying to tell. I like seeing the scary world through the eyes of a toddler and the reveals at the end, although obvious, are well executed. A lot of the heavy lifting goes to Teddy, who has the voice of a full-grown man and all of the best lines. The voice actor gives a layered performance that starts out creepy and ends up being incredibly endearing. Sort of a mix of Chuckie and Winnie the Pooh. My only complaint is that he shuts up for long stretches of the game. I wanted to hear more from Teddy.

Although I have some issues with the linear designs, the stages themselves are everything I hoped for. This is a horror game where we see everyday places and objects in the scariest light possible, and this game plays that up to full effect. I like how seamlessly we'll transition from exploring an eerie museum to being stuck in the middle of a terrifying forest. There's a lot to unpack in each of the creepy locations, and I have a hunch the ending will make you want to revisit them for a second time. But even if the game didn't have an effective story and quality voice acting, the nightmarish world would have been compelling enough on its own to make this game worth recommending. Thankfully, Among the Sleep has a lot more than scary graphics going for it.

Marred by linear stages and an all too brief story, Among the Sleep is an effective horror adventure seen through the eyes of a toddler. This unique storytelling conceit allows for an imaginative journey that ends up being a lot deeper than it first appears. It's a shame that the scary art design and Teddy's memorable voice acting is undercut by puzzles that mostly involve moving furniture around the room. But if you can get beyond the repetitive puzzles, you'll discover a horror game that has something to say, even if the hero can't speak.