Somnolence

This game is AI slop, If you want a good laugh, pick it up. Otherwise, just don't bother. It's not as cool as some of the screen shots make it out to be.

A linear experience focused on walking forward and simple interactions, sending you through constantly changing surreal environments and unpredictable moments. The premise revolves around a dream-induced therapy that is perfectly ordinary and has already helped several people. However, in an attempt to push it even further, you are the lucky subject who will receive the unauthorized part of the deal. Unlike the standard therapy, where you simply observe dreams as a passive viewer, this version places you directly inside them and gives you full control over your body. There is a problem, though. Since you are fully awake within a dream, the system mistakes you for a supervisor and sends you to a control room monitored by a flying drone called Watcher. The scans and parameters show irregularities because you are not who Watcher believes you are, but it dismisses them as errors. That changes when it digs deeper and discovers that you are actually an ordinary subject. This revelation causes Watcher to turn red and become far more menacing than its previously calm and friendly blue state. After receiving a phone call from the real world telling you to run, you jump through a portal, dodge a few spiders sent after you, and end up in a calm location where you fall asleep in a bed. From that point on, you are taken on a wild journey where you never quite know what awaits you next. From a gameplay perspective, there is very little that requires serious thought. The main task is simply moving forward and occasionally interacting with objects by pressing a button. Objects are not marked and there are no visual hints, but they are easy to notice due to the small stages and limited room for movement. The locations and environments are wild in the best way. For example, the first peaceful area featuring a lighthouse by the sea is soon replaced by a disturbing corridor filled with water, hanging meat, and a strange organic mass at the far end. There is some focus on liminal spaces, especially in the pool area, so not every location feels entirely unique. That said, these sections never overstay their welcome, as the game uses enough visual variety to keep things engaging. Fortunately, most locations are clearly different from one another. Sound design is where the game falters a bit. As you walk, you sometimes trigger events that are not meant to be jump scares, but the extremely loud shrieking noises effectively turn them into one. Voice volume is also inconsistent, ranging from acceptable to barely audible. If you turn up your speakers to hear the dialogue, you risk being hit with a sudden loud moment that can make the entire house react. Voices follow you constantly, either from someone trying to help you from the outside or from the entity attempting to keep you trapped inside. The game makes use of AI generated content, so enjoyment will largely depend on how you feel about that. Voices, images, and even short video clips replace traditional cutscenes. Some of these clips feature humans who resemble real people, but the imperfections of AI are noticeable, making the artificial nature hard to ignore. Despite its strong visuals, the game also runs smoothly and shows no signs of optimization issues. That said, there are occasional bugs that can halt progression. For example, during the train sequence, the next trigger failed to activate, leaving me stuck. In another instance, an interaction did not play its required animation. Fortunately, these issues are not permanent, and progress can be resumed by quitting to the main menu and continuing from the last stage. Since there is no traditional save system, this must be done through the stage select menu, but the stages are short enough that very little progress is lost. Overall, this is still a fun experience because it does not rely on a single idea and continues to place you in new environments. It takes around two hours to complete and has three endings (all available from the last stage), but offers limited interaction focused mainly on walking forward, and tries a bit too hard to present its story as deep. Still, if you enjoy this genre, it may be worth giving it a try.

This was a fantastic backrooms sci fi horror experience, absolutely wild. The use of Ai art totally makes sense in this game and for once it didn't put me off at all:) Well done to the Developer, lots of creativity has gone into the game. Full Playthrough - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt_rTHQF5f4&t=1103s

Just beat the game. A super trippy realistic backrooms/horror game taking you through spacey realms. You can really feel the vibrant colors like on the lsd trip daisies level or the futuristic alien spaceship with colorful glowing lights everywhere. The game is pure eye candy with some bloody hilarious and terrifying moments like a floating torso making funny screams at you or random funny looking people jump scaring you. Full of backrooms levels like playrooms, poolrooms and more. Tons of giant trippy space vibe levels and hours of content to explore. The narration, story and gameplay are top notch, The game is one hell of a trippy experience

Do not recommend. It is a w key simulator made with AI. I have to wonder how much of the script was AI generated as well. Just sloppy. The game glitched out on me several times leaving the screen black or not popping up prompts to progress the game. Too conceptual as well.

Not bad. 10 / 7 More dark/weird games: https://store.steampowered.com/curator/45665580-Dark-Surreal-Ps1Grafics-Weird-Deep-Games/

Oyunu ben yapsam ancak bu kadar yapardim herhalde :)

This game was a bit of a slog at times and could have been condensed into a much sharper experience. That being said there's a lot to appreciate here. There's a nice play with creativity that uses color and light to really solidify the mood that the developer is going for. There's definitely a backrooms vibe to a lot of the scenarios and I found it had similarity to Dreamcore and Poolcore. I don't know if that was effective because I didn't see a connection between the rooms and the story although I found the atmosphere top notch. The voice acting is AI so it's wonky and not the greatest. I think there's some human in there but I'm not entirely sure. It's definitely a weaker aspect of the game. The sound design overall is brutal- there are excessive loud noises that I found grating in a painful way and while there's options to mess around with audio nothing seemed to lower them without also lowering the actual dialogue. Be forewarned- headphones on the shoulders or off for this one. The music, however, was overall pleasing and one of the stronger aspects of the game. The story was interesting eventually. As it started and continued to progress while utilizing "baby's first philosophy" criteria I found myself a bit disenchanted. I've seen a lot of games discussing the futility of everything, what makes reality, and what our expectations vs lived experiences are and how that causes internal dissonance. It's not a new topic which can be totally okay if it's discussed in more than a shallow, trite manner. This game was teetering on the edge and at times fell over into utilizing a lot of words to meaningfully say very little that hasn't been discussed into perpetuity. I found the ending to actually save that aspect of this game. I won't go into spoilers but it was novel enough to recontextualize the previous aspects of the story which changed my opinion from not recommending to recommending with a few caveats. To address the elephant in the room- this game utilizes an immense amount of AI. I got it through a Humble so I wasn't aware of the specifics because I like to jump into games without much research so I can fully immerse myself in the experience. This entire thing is an AI vehicle. I won't wade into that territory here since that isn't what this review is for but I think it would be a disservice to not let others know this. I recommend if these issues aren't showstoppers for you. I found the story, after the ending, to be pretty interesting and there's some very good horror here within the surreal. There's minimal puzzle aspects- this is almost a pure walking simulator. If you're intrigued by what you've seen then I think you'll find an interesting if not wholly unique experience here.