Game Review: Sleep Tight (Switch)
When we were children, we were always told to watch out for the monsters lurking under our bed. This idea of monsters hiding in our bedrooms waiting to attack us became the basis of the Disney Pixar movie ‘Monsters Inc’ and now, studio We Are Fuzzy have brought their own version of this concept to the Nintendo Switch.
Sleep Tight is a part twin-stick shooter, part base builder mix that sees you build defences to protect you from the monsters in your bedroom while also arming you with an array of weapons to take them out. It sounds simple enough but there is a deep level of strategy to this little game that gives it an unique feel.
The game is set up is pretty simple. Each level is broken into rounds – night and day and you simply need to survive the night to continue onto the next round. For the first night, you have only one weapon and you just need to shoot and dodge until the night is over. For each monster that you kill, you receive a star point which can then be used to buy new weapons, power ups and more. How you spend these star points is very important, do you kit yourself out with the best weapons and bucket loads of ammo or do you invest in a good defence system and take out the monsters from a distance?
You can put down tower defences to attack monsters, sofas (of varying sizes) that monsters must destroy to get past and more. Building a defensive perimeter with a mixture of sofas (medium and small) seemed like the best option for me but you’ve also got to make sure that you can get close enough to the star points that are dropped to so you can pick them up. It’s a lot of fun working out the best way to strategically protect yourself, still be able to move around a bit and not leave yourself vulnerable. There were issues at times with getting the placement of items like sofas correct – as soon as you released the right control stick, the object would move and not be placed exactly where you intended. It makes a little frustrating when you’re trying to ensure there are no gaps and therefore leaving you vulnerable.
As the levels progress, the difficulty really amps up with not only the variety of monsters increasing but the size of them too. And what you may think may be good defensive strategy can very quickly turn into a disaster. There were many times during my play through of this game where I thought my defences were flawless, only for them to break through and kill me. This game may look very cute but believe me when I say that it’s also very unforgiving.
Despite Sleep Tight being a fun and rather addictive little game, it’s not without its flaws. The main issue I had was the complete lack of variety in the levels. There are a number of characters that you can play as, each one unlocked after some achievement but you all play within the one bedroom. It would be really cool if each character had their own bedroom setting for you and even their own backstory. The game is quite shallow in that respect. The achievement system is also quite annoying with some characters only accessible until you’ve managed to survive 300 nights. 300 nights. I haven’t been able to get past 25 nights. It just seems a bit ridiculous to have such high achievement locks in a game like Sleep Tight.
Sleep Tight initially seems like a very shallow title and in a way it is. The lack of level variety is disappointing but developers We Are Fuzzy have created a game that is a lot of fun to play. The gameplay isn’t perfect but it’s nothing that a software patch couldn’t easily fix. The big surprise for me is how addictive this game is and how everyone can play it a little different. Play on the offensive or focus on your defences? There’s a lot of strategy to this little title that should not be overlooked.
Pros
- Deep strategy
- Good variety of weapons
- Addictive and good value for money
Cons
- Lack of variety in levels
- Placement of objects can be a little tricky
VERDICT: While this soup isn’t the full package, with a few extra ingredients, it could be.
