Remember that game you used to play when you were a child, when you and a friend would make up a story, one word or sentence at a time. Usually it made little or no sense, but 90% of the time it was still hilarious somehow! Well, this is that game, but instead of just words, it’s pictures, actions, characters, and directing. It’s a story.. which is also a game.. which is also a basic form of Photoshop. Sound confusing? That’s because it’s so absurdly, ingeniously unique! It’s great fun once you pick up the controls and options available to you.
Sleep is Death is a simple game created by indie developer Jason Rohrer that came out on April 17th last year, which is when we first got it, but sadly it seems to have never quite taken off, where we have seen the insane success of other indie games such as Minecraft, this one seems to have remained underground ever since its release. Thankfully though, there’s a page devoted to the stories people make with SiD, where you can upload your bizarre adventures about flying frogs that smoke tree trunks and drive delorians through the Taj Mahal whilst bathing in a tomato-juice filled tea pot that can talk, for everybody else to enjoy. It’s only playable by two people, no more and no less, but this back-and-forth dynamic between two players (one ‘playing’ the game/story, and the other ‘directing’ it) makes for some outstanding random scenes that you neither of you will expect or see coming.
We’ve had a lot of fun playing with Sleep is Death; so much so that we even attempted to start our own mini-series that would attempt to break the mold of the incredibly insane – but ultimately hilarious – stories that make the bulk of what pops up on the submission site. So we started a random story, increased the time limit per turn from 30 seconds to 9999 seconds so we would have as much time as we wanted to make each scene as cool as possible, and then quite simply had a blast! We made the first ‘episode’ probably around 7 months ago, Mr Black – Episode One, and we had a lot of fun making it (go see it!), and then after kind of forgetting about Sleep is Death for a rather long while, we came back to it yesterday and decided to have a crack at the inevitable Mr Black – Episode Two, which is now online as well, and we had a whale of a time playing (writing?) this one too.
Sleep is Death is only a cheap little indie game, and yet it proves that imagination and a bit of spare time can yield some of the most unique two-player fun you’ll be able to get playing a game online with a buddy, or even someone you don’t know!
Your imagination truly is the only limit here. Well, that and your grasp on the glorified MS-Paint style functions…
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Format: N64
Release date: 1999
The successor to Goldeneye, Perfect Dark improved every possible aspect of the classic shooter and created an original masterpiece. 4-player multiplayer game modes, with the option of adding 8 extra bots made matches frantic chaos and endless fun. The singleplayer was fantastic at the time, featuring such state-of-the-art features as realtime lighting, blood spatter effects, and fully voice acted cinematic cutscenes. It even let you play the story in local co-op with a mate – player 2 got to be Joanna Dark’s weird-looking blonde sister – the first game I ever encountered with a co-op singleplayer mode.
The globe-trotting story bounced all over the place, including off-world to the Skedar’s planet (at which point, I gave up because the Skedar were just too scary). My particular favourite levels were the Carrington Villa, a sunny holiday home where you start off sniping soldiers on a pier far away, in order to save a negotiator. And Chicago, looking like something out of Blade Runner with floating cars and a dirty urban sprawl. That level had an excellent stealth section where you had to crawl into some sewers undetected to plant a bomb on the underside of a limousine. Really cool stuff.
Multiplayer was where I spent most of my time, though. Whenever I got 3 mates together, we’d play for hours and hours. We banned the Farsight gun, because it could see through walls for goodness sake. But grenades and rocket launchers were fine, even though their explosions would cause the N64 to chug and sputter if you happened to be playing with 8 simulants (first game I played with bots, too!). The game even had a persistent ranking system, which awarded you with a score and promotion based on how many kills you had. This was years before the likes of Call of Duty and Battlefield’s unlock systems, and I admit to being a little smug whenever my ranking appeared on the screen, as it was always slightly higher than any of my friends… it was my game, after all.
They rereleased Perfect Dark on the 360 Live Arcade, and I never realised how terrible some of the voice acting is. Back in the N64 days, simply having a fully voice-acted story with cutscenes was a fairly new thing, and hugely impressive, so I think the quality of said acting didn’t really matter much to me. Still, I don’t need a pair of rose-tinted goggles to remember how much I love Perfect Dark. I was absolutely blown away by that game.
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