Sleep Awake comes to PC and consoles

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Survival horror published by Blumhouse Games available now on Steam and the PlayStation and Xbox stores

What's the longest you think you could stay awake? What about if your life depended on it? Even then, maybe a couple of days, TOPS, but you'll have to do a whole lot better if you're to survive in EYES OUT's newly released horror adventure, Sleep Awake.

The world has been devastated by a phenomenon that came to be know as "The HUSH," in which anyone who falls asleep de-materializes, leaving only a "void shadow" behind. In the last known city, those still alive "exist in a crisis of reckless experiments to keep awake," and any remnants of society are now split into various warring "dogmatic factions [that] insist they have the one true solution." Against this backdrop, a young woman named Katja has developed a special infusion to keep herself awake. But sleep deprivation itself is a terrible thing. Now, not only must she continually keep herself alert and evade the "depraved death cults" roaming the city ruins whenever she ventures out, she must also deal with her own crumbling psyche. Who is the strange woman in her waking visions, and why is Katja able to collect the remaining essences of those who have disappeared? 

Sleep Awake has some impressive credentials behind it, as the game was spearheaded by Cory Davis (Spec Ops: The Line) and Robin Finck of the musical group Nine Inch Nails. It's a slick production, with crisp 3D first-person graphics depicting the ravaged city in all its now-decrepit glory, interspersed with psychedelic FMV flashes of surreal images and the occasional visit to what seems like another world altogether, if only in the protagonist's mind. But as you'd expect from its developer's pedigree, great attention has also been devoted to an impressive "auditory experience to create heart-pumping moments and exhilarating dream-like sequences." In your attempts to "save the ones you love" and hopefully even salvage the "remaining good in the world," players will have various objectives to complete, light puzzles to solve, and microfilms and other items to collect to learn more about world and the "realm between sleep and death." But beware falling victim to the "twisted experiments" of the brutal cult-like foes you encounter, as "stealth and wits are your only weapons against the warped minds and bodies of humanity’s last remaining citizens."

Adding even more punch to the production, Sleep Awake is published by Blumhouse Games (they're not just movies anymore!) and is now available for download, as is a playable demo to try first, on Steam for Windows PC, along with console versions for PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S.