Jason Rohrer's Sleep Is Death: Pay What You Want
Imagine a two-player game about telling stories, with the aid of a UI. Now imagine that game being pay-what-you-want. Joining the latest craze of indies gone cheap (or, alternately, expensive, if you so desire), Jason Rohrer's Sleep Is Death costs at least $1.75 (to cover bandwidth and payment processing fees), but you get two copies. Since the game is only two-player, you give a copy to a friend.
It is available on PC, Mac, and Linux, DRM-free, and open source.
What exactly is Sleep Is Death? This 148-page flip book probably explains it best, but in short, it is a platform through which you tell a story. One person constructs the stories, using the UI to place items, their reactions, NPCs, et cetera, and the other operates in that world. For any tabletop players, imagine one as a DM, the other as the character-sheet wielding schmuck who never does what you want, and requires you to be on your toes.
You can also create objects for the game, and anyone with whom you play that has created objects, passes those on to you. It becomes a community-sharing story platform, so to speak.
So, if you still have room in your budget for another pay-what-you-want splurge by the end of this week, why not grab a friend and give Sleep Is Death a try?
VorpalBunny
Posted to Video Games on 14 May 2010
· Comments (4)
Other stuff like this: indie, jason rohrer, linux, mac, open source, pay-what-you-want, pc, sleep is death
I was intrigued enough to buy a copy of this, I think the concept is worthy of contribution if nothing else. I haven't actually played it yet, but if it's as good as it looks, I may have to look into buying a copy or two for friends.
A good friend of mine bought this when it was $12, and begged me to play it. I was also intrigued enough to try this experiment, but the learning curve is VERY steep for the one setting the scene and you only have 30 SECONDS (player or storyteller) to create a "panel" in the comic.
The player who controls only one character also has an EXTREMELY limited and sometimes buggy interface, which just makes one feel very boxed in.
This is an interesting idea: Coming up with your own stories on the fly. Sharing sprites among players definitely adds to the artsy appeal of it.
But unless you are the kind of gamer that GENUINELY enjoys playing RPG Maker or genuinely wants to go into game design, don't expect too much enjoyment out of this product.
Yeah, the only thing that worried me was the 30 second time limit. It just seems so arbitrary and fun-draining, even though I can understand how it adds challenge and "gameplay" to something that would be just an interactive level editor without it.
The possibilities are fantastic, but it certainly seems to require a whole lot of effort and imagination from the controlling player - and cooperation from the other player, too.
I can imagine what a bore it would be if the other player would just say "no, I don't want to do this" to everything the controller had planned. :P
You're supposed to plan for that.
It's actually really easy to make stuff.