Mr. Sleepy Man

This is a thoroughly enjoyable game. Having a sense of wonder and freedom without the game outright telling you whats going on feels refreshing. Loaded with charm and personality, it's a joy to play and I recommend anyone to play, if you can handle the confusion at first, which Mr. Sleepy Man also doesn't understand what's happening, due to his condition.

One of the coolest modern indie 3D platformers out there that's able to completely defy expectations on what one would expect from a first project until it suddenly starts having certain issues that I've never seen quite so blatant in a game that's managed to pick up a sense of popularity like this. Mr Sleepy Man is a breath of fresh air in a lot of respects compared to the way I've seen a lot of the genre go, even in instances where I still like those games! This focus on giving your character a lot of moves in a Mario Odyssey-like fashion is hard to not notice at some point, every game needs to have 80 different moves the player has to mitigate any mistakes made, with everything revolving around stringing stuff together in acts of safe, yet seemingly technical bouts of mechanical expression. This is where Mr Sleepy Man comes in, choosing to forgo much of this and instead, with a moveset that's more limited and instead focused on a lot of strange physics and momentum nonsense, complete with the classic N64 feeling of wondering if most of these platforms were even intended to be jumped on to begin with. Mr Sleepy Man revels in its little oddities and quirks like this, its moments of things not quite lining up quite right, at times feeling obtuse in stupid ways to the point where it feels like you almost need to straight up learn how things function as if they're some sort of esoteric rule, rather than a weirdly integrated game mechanic. This effect feels especially prominent thanks to how free you are to roam free and screw around, after an initial tutorial for the most basic of controls. The nature of the screwing around is remarkably fun, feeling somewhat like the sorta stuff Untitled Goose Game would allow you to partake in, just infinitely more needlessly malicious, ruining families, destroying the stock in a store, straight up killing a guy at one point? It's great fun. There's a wonderful chaotic energy to what you're capable of and it's made especially warm with how personal a project this feels. Mr Sleepy Man was primarily made by just a single person and you can really feel that, in all the best and worst ways, but that just endears me to it all (usually). There are so many little jokes and ideas that really do not land at all for me but feel as if they're jokes almost nobody would find funny other than Devin Santi, I wish to never see Little Jerry again for as long as I live. There are also a lot of sections where the proper way to play them is still weird and stupid and kinda aggravating, which I honestly find to be pretty fun usually! The avoidance to provide players with very clear and obvious safe methods of success is a fun way to make things feel a little more organic even within environments so garish and obviously video gamey as this, after all, it's rarely fun to feel a dev heavy handedly push you into a perfect clean state of victory. The mushroom room might be hell on earth but the fact that it exists in such a pure form also makes it super memorable and a far more entertaining moment than if the throwing worked properly or the margin for error were far greater etc. etc. Despite all this however, I do unfortunately think it does hit a point where a lot of elements culminate in a game that conveys many of its ideas a little strangely, especially since there were multiple mechanics and ideas that completely flew past my head due to them not functioning correctly in the slightest the first time I attempted to do so. Learning that you could destroy certain objects with random rocks lost some of its wonder of discovery thanks to the fact that it was something that had to be told to me after my first couple of attempts at doing so inexplicably did not work. The fact that the day/night cycle and passing of time that the game builds itself around to an extent has next to 0 effect on the majority of game areas similarly leads to some false conclusions being reached, making the return to the main area feel surprising in a way that becomes soured due to it only being so surprising because of it being a mechanic that felt as if it were explained to you wrong. This is supposedly the first ever unity project opened by Devin Santi, and while in a lot of regards it holds this unbridled creativity and ambition that makes such a thing seem entirely impossible, there are also a lot of issues that I haven't really seen since my grade 10 programming classes in high school. There are a few moments where you really could feel as if you would be able to envision the jankily cobbled together Unity scene, complete with strange, unintuitive solutions on how to design things, as if you can see all the invisible stretched box colliders spanning across the terrain, not really expecting people to bypass them. None of this fully ruins the experience by any means but it does get a bit much sometimes and certainly at least, feels like it would have been especially bothersome if I had not had people telling me how certain things worked. At the same time though, despite that, games should be like this always all the time I love it so much, being personal not only in pure narrative content, but in the very foundation of its own creation, seeing seams in the universe mixed in with certain clear biases about what's fun. There's so much more to the personality of expression in game design that goes on than what a lot of people seem to believe, and this might be one of the strongest examples of this exact feeling due to how its imperfections let this all bleed through that much more, leading to this one of a kind moment in time that nobody else on the planet could've made quite like this. There might need to be quite a lot you have to look past to fully embrace love for this one, but I for one, think that it's worth it. 9/10

game mad with heart by someone who did it with love, in the shadows of "will this really work out" trying his stuff, being genuinely weird. wish i was richer so I could actually donate some gratitude money to that dude.

What in the Peak is this game.

I could not get past the first few minutes without feeling nauseous. This game gives me terrible motion sickness and those saying, you will get used to it, that's not true. I found the mystery behind video game motion sickness. It's disabling camera shake. Recently. I discovered, when I enable camera shake while playing games like Lost in Random, Psychonauts and the likes, I don't feel sick. I enjoy the experience. Indeed, when I disable camera shake, even games like Shapez 2 can cause motion sickness. I really want play this game, but despite adjusting all the settings, I could not remedy my motion sickness. It's a shame. Comedy games are so rare that finding one is finding a treasure and this one looks like a rare gem. I hope the devs fix this issue. I'm adding it to my wishlist.

Picked this up during the Steam sale, since I was feeling the platformer itch and was blown away by the amount of work put into this, considering it's a solo developed game. Movement feels right and has a bit of a learning curve to it so everything isn't braindead, but also has the flexibility to let you approach a bunch of situations in completely novel or goofy ways. Major kudos; a lot of platforming games struggle to nail that kind of freedom without it allowing the player to trivialize everything after they get out of the learning phase. As far as narrative goes, I really do like how it handles nostalgia and its portrayal as a totalizing state of destructive arrested development, should one be totally subsumed by it. I especially liked all of the music-video-style segments that tied into it. Lost in Dreams was some genuine Real ♥♥♥♥, and I really dig the sincerity behind it being a straight up music video made to complement the interactive elements in the scene. I was genuinely blown away. The other similar segments are very good as well, but Lost in Dreams was the key turning point in particular that elevated the game into, "hold on, this rules", for me. Mr. Sleepy Man, while not the best platformer ever (it doesn't need to be), has a lot of places to explore, a lot of things to collect, and a lot of charm and soul to its merit, and I'm glad I eventually got around to playing it.

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.

what a joyful little game. one can clearly see the early 3d era influences, in a world with its very own artstyle. the gameplay feels sometimes a little bit challenging, but not in a too frustrating way. thank you for this funny experience!

[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