Kids can run around the backyard without costumes or sets, imagining they’re pirates on rolling seas. Adults playing in an empty black-box theater call this improvising, telling a collaborative story. Sleep Is Death tries to distill this spirit into a computer game. And it’s not fair to call it a game; it’s so much more and less.
Sleep Is Death requires two players on different computers, either on a local network or online. The game includes a second download for your friend, cross-platform for Windows, Mac, or Linux. And you might be able to find a partner to play with on sidtube.com, a community website.
The game controller (right) has many settings to keep everything running smoothly.
One person leads the story, choosing and controlling characters and backgrounds, and handling dialogue for nearly everything—think of the man behind the curtain. The second person sees just the created scene and controls their single character. Players alternate 30-second turns, moving their character and typing a line of dialogue--when you’re finished, the game saves the single frame of action and sends it to the other player. Back and forth, like a story. The leading player decides when the game has ended, usually 30 minutes to an hour later. Afterward, you’ll get a storyboard that can be viewed in a web browser, showing each turn and action.
Completely open-ended, Sleep Is Death is whatever you make it. Scenes can take place anywhere you can dream up: the Earth’s core, on top of a pinhead, in a bubblegum lake. Characters can be a duck, a girl, an airplane, a tornado, anything. The characters and scenery do come from somewhere; the leading player creates or downloads almost everything ahead of time. Powerful editors let you build characters, ambient objects, backgrounds, even music. The game runs in a low resolution, so creations have a pixelated style, but that’s more freeing than limiting--instead of striving for perfection, you’ll make something good and move on. Still, you could spend hours figuring out the tools and building a cast and sets. Creativity is a big part of the fun.
The other player only sees the action.
But no matter how much the controlling player planned ahead, you’ll run into situations where you can’t proceed. Suppose you built sets and characters for a story at an ice-skating rink. What happens if the other player wants to leave that location? The leading player can scramble to create the new sets on the fly, but that usually takes much longer than the 30-second turn allows. And if you say, “No, we can’t do that,” too often, the other player can get frustrated.
Instead of creating a space where anything is possible, only the things you build are real. Kids and improvisers can agree on anything, since they have no set or props. Sleep Is Death takes a visual approach, so players can only agree on what they see.
Sleep Is Death’s limitless potential conflicts with the practicality of creating everything. Still, players who can work together or get absorbed in the tools can enjoy the creative process.
Sleep Is Death (Geisterfahrer)
COMPANY: Jason Rohrer
CONTACT: www.sleepisdeath.net
PRICE: Name your price, minimum $1
REQUIREMENTS: Mac OS 10.2 or later, plus a second computer and friend
Powerful visual editors can craft anything. Music editor builds soundtracks. Open-ended creativity. Downloadable assets can help build up your object library. Records your stories for later review. Unlimited potential and replay.
Situations arise where you need an unanticipated object or set, halting a story. Weak documentation causes confusion. Lacks sufficient tagging or search system. Lacks goals other than those you determine.
