Mr. Sleepy Man

This game feels exactly like how 3D platformers felt back in the 90s. I’m already nostalgic for Mr. Sleepy Man. So much passion and creativity has been poured into this I AM GENUINELY OBSESSED!! It reminds me of 40 Winks, which was one of my faves back in the day. Makes you feel like a kid again — a bit terrified yet desperately curious.. Perfect game and the music is FIRE (..Lost In Dreams made me tear up) UPD: I cried like a mf. 10/10, hits home so hard.

This game is the first 3D platformer since Rayman 2 that's hooked me; really wholesome, creative, tripped out n vibey. Got the brain tingles

So much stuff to do/funny dialogue too. I really can't believe that Devin was capable of doing all this and I hope he really is proud of his work, as it's quite the showcase put out there. I have ADHD and there are some difficult things but I at least find myself coming back to it. I love the '90s vibes as well.

This is going to be a soft recommend. This is definitely not for everyone, it might not have been for me. Playing it sometimes I felt like "wow this is cool" and sometimes like "well, this is kind of tiring", which I feel is a good way to summarize how I feel about the game. Somethings are great, somethings are okay, and somethings are bad. Great stuff: - This is definitely a labor of love, almost entirely made by a single developer. That means 3D modeling, programming, story, sounds, level design, obviously music, and mostly everything else. That's A LOT! I'm a game developer as well and have never tried working on everything on a single game, but I can tell from experience by doing like 50% of each game I made, making 100% is A LOT. It feels great playing a game that has received so much love in its development - The setting is extremely unique. This whole "sleeping" theme, about dreams and nightmares. The whole town and different area settings, the characters, how the gameplay ties itself. I've played tons of indies and can tell that there's nothing like it - It's one of the rare cases where a game doesn't allow its influences to dictate itself entirely. This game references A LOT of games. The menu sound effects reminds me of Zelda. The combat reminds me of A Hat in Time. The sandbox platforming exploration reminds me of Super Mario 64. Some music remind me of Banjo Kazooie. There's a tree that's DEFINITELY Deku Tree from Ocarina of Time. The game even references Seinfeld in a tiny joke. What I mean is, by playing the game you might see a bunch of references and obvious influences it had, but the game never stops feeling unique Okay stuff: - The platforming. It's okay, not great (otherwise it would be on "Great stuff" haha). It's waaaay too 10% or 100%. You either jump 10% height or 100% height. You're either at 10% speed or 100% speed. For example, your character has a set maximum speed, but you can jump and perform a slide that propels you WAY too intensely forward without being cancelable. You don't have "in-betweens" in your movement, every move goes way too hard. But it has some good stuff, you have a good variety of vertical and horizontal movements - The stamina system. I just don't think it has a place in this game, it just makes it less fun. Imagine Mario in Super Mario 64 lost 30% of a bar of stamina whenever he long jumped. It just adds unecessary waiting and makes it feel worse to combo moves that cost stamina, which are many - The camera. At random points it gets very buggy and even inverted for some reason, but otherwise it works well - The story. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention, but it didn't make much sense to me. It was one of those cases where when you think something will FINALLY make sense, it starts making even less sense. I'm okay with these types of lore heavy stories that require you to really use your brain to interpret it, look for stuff you missed online or even discuss with other people. But I think these types of stories are better suited for games that have shorter cutscenes, like Hollow Knight for example. It just doesn't feel good to watch a cutscene for several minutes and just not understanding it Bad stuff: - The dialogue system. When you're in a dialogue, the game gives you two options: Press A to skip text, or hold B to skip the entire cutscene. The problem is, the dialogue bubbles display text with a very slow typewriter effect (an effect many games use where letters appear one at a time), but when you press A instead of showing the whole current text, it skips to the next one! Which means you are forced to wait for the typewriter effect. This makes 'some' sense if the dialogue is voiced, but even when it's not voiced you can't press A to show the whole text! In my opinion even when it's voiced you should have that option. Also some cutscenes are not skippable with B for some reason, which is kind of annoying in a game that wants you to replay stuff from time to time - And my final point and biggest issue I have with Mr Sleepy Man: the game structure itself. Maaaan it's confusing. The game is a sandbox, which means you can go literally anywhere. But it's not a Mario 64 type of sandbox where there are many levels and each level is a mini sandbox. It's more of a real open world style of sandbox, think something like maybe Goat Simulator, you start in one point and from there you can go anywhere. My biggest problem with how it's done in this game is because you don't have to interact with the open world at all, and I only realized this by the end of my playtime. You see, it took me 9 hours to beat the game, but in the middle of my playthrough I was realizing I was doing stuff that didn't seem to progress the main plot. I was exploring the world, feeling like I was doing some sort of progress, without realizing I could already have beaten the game MANY hours ago. That's when I was realizing how weird and flawed the structure of the game was If you haven't played TLOZ: Breath of the Wild you probably have already watched or read something about it. That game has an area called The Great Plateau, it's where you start in the game and after that there's a whole world to explore. In that game, you can leave this starter area and beat it at once! Go straight to the end in Hyrule Castle, fight the final boss and everything. But the thing is, that's EXTREMELY hard with your character stats all down, and 99% of the players won't do that. In Mr. Sleepy Man the opposite happens. You can finish the game in The Great Plateau, you kind of don't even need to leave it. And most players did just that. I realized it because, as I was exploring the game's sandbox, I was doing very basic missions and was getting golden achievements for that. Achievements on Steam that have been completed by less than 10% of players. And when I finally got to finish the game, many many more people have done that. Because the means to finish the game are right there in the starting area. There's a small detour to fight a boss in another area, but it's so close to the starting area that it doesn't count for much. This game has a big open world that's begging you to not explore it. The whole world outside of the starting area serves only for you to collect stuff you don't even need. You can collect shiny things which are entirely optional except for a single one, I believe, and cloud coins which increase your maximum health that gets way too big allowing you to tank everything. You actually use the shiny things to allow you to kind of "fast travel" through the game, but you don't need that because you can just beat it already in the starting area. Realizing it, it felt bad. The game has 100% content, but you only need to interact with around 20% of it. You can beat it without meeting tons of characters, without visiting many many areas. And I'm not talking about end game stuff, I realize some games have optional areas, but in here it feels like the entire game is optional. Usually it's like, 20% of the content is optional stuff, in this game it's 80%. Conclusion: Having said all that, the game is worth a shot! It's definitely a labor of love, the developer clearly dedicated a lot of time and hard work on it. Even though it seems I have more negative then positive to say about this game, I don't regret having experienced it and do still recommend for all platformer and wacky stuff enjoyers out there! It has a very unique comedy/horror style which makes it worth trying

Absolute hidden gem of a game. Highly Recommended.

Finished the game and all i could say is... Just play it im not one to play platformers and i always felt shyed away from them, but Sleepy Man genuinely captivated and captured my attention from start to finish. got it as a gift but i would have payed for it and played it again a million times again this game and its creator needs so much more attention than it has, a gem that i could not recommend enough even to those who think a platforming game would be boring it has the right amount of comedy silly moments and characters you could love or hate. All i can say is PLEASE give Mr Sleepy Man a chance !!!

[h1]There's a Little Sleepy Man in us All[/h1] [b][url=https://youtu.be/ACnniv-poc4] Check out the full breakdown on 2 Headed Hero![/url][/b] After spending way too long in the demo, picked this up for a song. Not even a platformer fan, but this was tremendous! Great music, silly shenanigans, wonderful writing and some truly tear-jerking moments later down the line. Although it has some stumbles with the camera and difficulty spikes in a few of the mazelike sections, Mr. Sleepy Man captures that Mario 64/Psychonauts vibe wonderfully well. Full breakdown in our latest roundup: https://youtu.be/ACnniv-poc4

This game is seriously so impressive for what one person can make. Everything about the game is really enjoyable, there was clearly a lot of love and care put into it. Obviously the game isn't perfect (no game truly is), and despite encountering multiple bugs, I really enjoyed my time with the game! This definitely scratched that 3D platformer + collectathon itch of mine. Ummm idk what else to say but I like this game it is very cool and fun.

Hesitant recommend. + Nice tunes + Unique vibe + Surprisingly touching story bits + Very impressive for a solo dev * Not really for youngest in the family, due to certain themes * Short playtime (Completed the main story in 5h, although there are extra objectives) * Plenty of HP upgrades so dying is not an issue through the whole game, but completing certain optional objectives is surprisingly strict time-wise and can cause frustration - Jank - Minor bugs - Story felt a tad incomplete as it stood, left me wanting more from it Demo gives a pretty good idea about the gameplay, although it does not touch the story bits, which took me by surprise in the full game.

Mr. Sleepy Man is an impressive debut from solo developer Devin Santi: a colourful, absurdist send-up of 90’s collectathon platformers that revels in nostalgia with one hand and flips it off with the other. The story is a bit a bit shaggy - you play a sleepy man attempting to unpack the complex trauma of your…mentor? Friend? He’s wracked with anguish over the loss of his other friend - a prominent cereal mascot - see, they used to be real tight, just play this game-within-a-music-video-within-a-game, it’ll all make sense. What we’re really getting at here is a takedown of nostalgia, in games and in life. To sleep, to idle in dreams, is to stay static, choosing the comfort of predictable and orderly games over the fear and risk of moving forward in life. Teefy isn’t happy gazing at his pointedly-named Lonely 64 - really, he’s miserable trying to conjure up a long-gone past with Dinosaur Jones - but he’d much rather stay in a land where time literally refuses to pass than to accept that he’s chasing a dream he can no longer return to. It’s up to our indifferent sleeper - whose own dreams remain a mystery - to teach him a lesson. Where the story critiques nostalgia, the gameplay invokes it, inviting comparisons to classic Rare platformers - though the dashes of dark, absurd humour prevent the game from being regarded as pure pastiche. Mr. Sleepy Man certainly hopes you’re awake enough to notice the underlying tension in its presentation, and not sleepwalk through your playthrough and treat it only as another indie throwback. The game’s structure will prove challenging and maybe confusing to some. Sleepy is not interested in holding your hand, and while it’s not too complicated an experience, the lack of tutorializing and clear missions create an imbalance the game is excited to play with, throwing unusually shaped and arranged levels at you just to see how you respond. This gleeful sense of chaos is woven throughout; the rigid objectives of a standard collectathon are shattered and reassembled into a bizarre mosaic. To complete our objectives there are some characters we need to help, but most we need to torment. Of the core five items needed to complete the main game, some of them come from boss battles that come at the end of meaty exploration sections; others appear after relatively trivial interactions with nearby NPCs. Collectibles abound - kind of. I gathered all of the game’s 64 “shiny things”, each of which required a reasonable bit of work to earn. Additionally there are scores of other objectives available, most of which are strange, obscure, and unrewarded. It’s interesting, considering the game’s cynical approach to the genre, that many players boast uncritically their delight in thoroughly accomplishing tasks like “bother a tulpa of Jerry Seinfeld 17 times”. (Hey, I did it too - I wanted to see if anything would happen.) The lopsided approach to structure and objective is mostly a matter of taste, and how much one wishes to be in on the joke. There are some weaknesses that feel less tongue-in-cheek, chief among them the score of mechanics that are introduced (MM-style time loops, OoT-style musical spells, Sunshine-style pure platformer levels, Banjo-style move upgrades) and used less than a handful of times. These make for some exceptional moments of delight and challenge, but they feel a bit suffocated by the game’s unwillingness to pick a gameplay direction and stick with it. (It should be said for those who are picky about such things: there are some minor bugs, but not enough to really affect my playthrough. The breadth of material, the strong art direction, and the impressive sound and music design more than overcome a few technical limitations.) Overall, those looking for a classic-feeling platformer will find a lot to like in Mr. Sleepy Man, though it can feel at times like you’re playing a title you were a little too young for with a lost game manual. There’s more slumbering below the surface, though, making Mr. Sleepy Man worth a deeper consideration.