Among The Sleep Demo Crawls Among The Living

Babies are the truest scions of terror. They represent the most primal, universally relevant fears we humans can have: responsibility, loss of freedom, uncontrollable fecal matter, etc. Among The Sleep, however, is not a horror game about raising an infant (although, thinking about it, that could be incredible), but rather being one. It teeters onto the scene at a good time, given that small-time survival-horror's been hit by the Slenderfication Beam and the Dead Spaces and Resident Evils of the world don't seem to understand that it's not particularly scary to be the unstoppable monster that slaughters everything. A breath of fresh (read: putrid and rotting, with a hint of squash-flavored baby food) air is much appreciated right now, and you can have a go at it this very second. So hop to it. Oh, but don't step on the cracks. As we all learned from our childhood peers on the playground, lives are at stake.

The demo's apparently a slightly spiffed up version of the early section I played a few weeks ago, and it's available in PC, Mac, and Linux flavors. I liked it quite well, though I came away with a few reservations. Among other things, Among The Sleep felt extremely scripted and a wee, waddly bit clunky to me. Also, what kind of two-year-old stays eerily silent all the time? Maybe the twist is that you're a very, very, very young Gordon Freeman.

The demo's still well worth a play, though - especially in light of the fact that Among The Sleep just hit its funding goal on Kickstarter. It still has a few days left before the campaign wraps once and for all, too, and stretch goals include Oculus Rift support and developer commentary. Exciting!

After that, backers get an expanded alpha in the summer and a full-blown beta somewhere down the line. Release, meanwhile, is slated for late this year. How are you finding the demo, though? Is it to your liking?