Workplace Sleep Syndrome

by iman
Overall★★★★★★★★★★3.80
Fun★★★★★★★★★★3.51
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.96
Theme★★★★★★★★★★3.94
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★4.35
Audio★★★★★★★★★★3.63
Humor★★★★★★★★★★3.50
Must... not... sleep...

Stuck working in a boring office?

Falling deeper and deeper into sleep?

The sleepier you get, the better you can see your dreams. Venture deeper into your dream world and do your best to stay awake with the help of coffee and alarm clocks. But beware, your dream world is full of alluring traps and enemies which make you even sleepier.
If your boss catches you asleep, you may not have a job for too long!

This game was made for Ludum Dare 48 by:
Lucky90Happy - character art, environment art and level design.
Noctiluca - character, cutscene, menu art and playtesting.
Lobstah - UI art.
Iman - programming, design and music.
Genres: platformer
Tools: Unity

Comments25

Poorwill
Poorwill26 Apr 2021, 18:05
Lovely idea and very nice art. The aesthetics and the feel of it actually remind me of some good older era platformers.

Even though the effect of the opacity increasing and decreasing is cool, I feel like having the platformer translucent most of the time even kind of takes away from the overall look of things. I imagine maybe having a visible circle around the character that expands as you get sleepier and contracts the more awake you are would work interestingly as well. So the faster you go, the less you see the world around you.
Kii Krindar
Kii Krindar26 Apr 2021, 19:12
Great idea, wonderful art and audio, tons of fun! I really like the concept of not only having to get from platform to platform, but also striking balance between what you can see and how dangerous it is to progress. Loved it, I'll definitely come back to play more!
YgdraN26 Apr 2021, 19:13
Really fun game with an interesting concept and gameplay, the levels are challenging, you must really keep things in balance in order to proceed. Nice work!
Omich
Omich26 Apr 2021, 19:30
Awesome! Good idea
etom
etom26 Apr 2021, 20:16
Wonderfull graphics!!!
zondarg
zondarg26 Apr 2021, 22:06
Great, got to the "my boss is a meanie". Wonderful pixel art, and gets more and more removed to fantasy and fairyland as the levels progress. Cool mechanic, the between-sleep-and-awake. And fitting music too. Good job, I like it! :thumbsup:
LDJam user 236055
LDJam user 23605526 Apr 2021, 22:18
the art is awesome but I somehow cannot manage to do the first jump :( I figured it out it's space instead of the up key to jump higher
Madking26 Apr 2021, 22:21
Great concept
PythooonUser27 Apr 2021, 05:33
Very nice art! Neat idea with fading the actual game in and out :)
vsi-
vsi-27 Apr 2021, 08:02
great idea, nice mechanics, really liked the art, good job!
STiN
STiN27 Apr 2021, 08:03
I like the graphics.And idea of the game is very good.
Revilo27 Apr 2021, 11:41
Wonderful work, the art and layout is great, and has immense re-playability
randomhuman
randomhuman27 Apr 2021, 12:05
Fun platforming action, gorgeous art and great music.

The changing opacity of the "real world" overlay is a clever way of selling the drift into deeper and deeper sleep. It does make the opening moments of every level a bit unpleasant though. Maybe the curve in the opacity change could be weighted to change very rapidly at the very edge of wakefulness.
iMan
iManauthor27 Apr 2021, 13:17
@randomhuman @poorwill These are definitely great suggestions. The team had been quite unsure of that overlay and tuning it was always on our mind, thanks!
Ekaterina
Ekaterina27 Apr 2021, 20:19
Looks cool, I really like the art. The whole game looks pretty polished. Good job! I also like a non-standard approach to the topic.
anactualhuman
anactualhuman27 Apr 2021, 22:29
Gameplay is fun, pixel art is brilliant and audio is good.
Dodidouda
Dodidouda27 Apr 2021, 22:29
Very innovative idea, well executed! The pixel art was really good too. I really like this one :)
Scruffylooking212128 Apr 2021, 04:43
Fun to play and figure out the opacity controls. I also kept losing attempting to use W to jump, instead of SPACE. Once I figured that out, I was on my way. Loved the humor in the mission cutscenes. Thanks for making this.
phi
phi28 Apr 2021, 19:38
Very cool and meta! I love how the dream slowly fades away as you get more awake. The music is very chill and dreamy, and the combination of traditional platformer pixel art with a slightly-out-of-place office theme works really well! The difficulty progression is really good too. The only annoying thing was that sometimes the camera is a bit too slow to follow the player, so when jumping from a high place it is impossible to see where you're going.

Really impressive, thanks for making this!
patdag29 Apr 2021, 03:06
Just like the theme of the game, you've managed to also achieve balance it's execution. It's innovative and unique! Nice work!
iMan
iManauthor29 Apr 2021, 05:49
@phi thank you very much for playing! I completely agree that the camera can be tuned a bit more, the intention here was that the camera gets slower as the character gets sleepier. Wanted to go for a sluggish feel with it, however it perhaps gets a bit too slow, as the early part of each level is wasted in not being able to see the game too well at all.
Wolfier
Wolfier2 May 2021, 18:08
Definitely a great job on the art direction here, i think you got everything you wanted out of it.

I didn't really enjoy the pillows hitting you since they messed with the physics and getting touched usually resulted in me falling off a platform.

I kind of felt that there was no point not to go for coffee since the game has you in a race against time before you fall asleep and maxing it out simply means you can't see for a few seconds. Plus pillows were usually not in a position to make maxing out awakeness.

There were actually a few jerk moves I didn't like the coffee trail that leads to a bottomless pit or the pillows that are guaranteed to hit you if you keep walking and make you slip off the edge.
pentragon
pentragon2 May 2021, 19:10
Really creative idea, polished execution and a nice curve of game difficulty!
smbe19
smbe194 May 2021, 21:06
Interesting idea, nice game.

Other games by @iman

Found a bug?
Tell us on Discord