SLEEP AWAKE

About SLEEP AWAKE

SLEEP AWAKE is made by EYES OUT and published by Blumhouse Games, and came out on 2 December 2025 on PC, PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S. It comes from Cory Davis, known for Spec Ops: The Line, with an audio score by Robin Finck of Nine Inch Nails. The store calls it an immersive first-person psychedelic horror narrative that explores the realm between sleep and death.

The setting is the last known city on Earth, in the far future. Those who fall asleep disappear in what people call the Hush, and nobody knows why. The survivors have split into dogmatic factions, each sure it has the one true way to stay awake, and their reckless experiments have warped the minds and bodies of the city's last citizens. You play Katja, who opens the game brewing an eyedrop narcotic to keep herself and a woman called Amma awake, and who must survive the death cults and save the people she loves.

You have no weapons. Most of the threat comes from gas-masked men with clubs who patrol a brutal police state, and you get past them by staying out of sight, crouching under gaps and slipping through vent grilles. Between the sneaking you explore run-down apartments, rainy alleys and a theatre where anti-sleep experiments were carried out, read the files left behind and solve puzzles. As Katja tires, the city starts to hallucinate around her: filing cabinets push out of breathing walls, a turnstile fills with spinning knives, and full-motion video of screaming faces and close-up eyes cuts in.

Critics praised the look and the sound and were split on the stealth. GamesRadar+ found the gas-mask patrols routine and called the game only sporadically scary, but said it grows stronger in its second half, where a late enemy you must not look at is truly frightening. A run of the main story takes about three and a half to five hours.

It suits players who like short, story-led first-person horror with a strong art direction, such as Still Wakes the Deep or Karma: The Dark World, and stealth against human threats rather than combat. The ESRB rates it Mature for blood, intense violence, strong language and use of drugs.

How to play SLEEP AWAKE

1. Buy SLEEP AWAKE on Steam, the PlayStation Store or the Xbox store, or try the free demo on Steam first.
2. Explore the city in first person as Katja and read the files and books you find to learn about the Hush and the factions.
3. When the gas-masked patrols are near, stay out of their sight: crouch under gaps and use vent grilles to get past, since you cannot fight them.
4. Solve the puzzles of the distorted places you reach to open the way forward.
5. Keep moving through the hallucinations and live-action sequences, which carry the story between the city sections.

Tips

• Watch a patrol's route before you move; stealth is your only defence, so patience saves more retries than speed.
• Look for low gaps and vent grilles before stepping into a lit street; they are usually the way past the guards.
• Play with headphones: the audio by Robin Finck carries much of the mood and warns of what is near.
• Not every strange thing is harmless: a hallucination can turn into a hazard, so do not walk into anything that looks like it could cut you.

Questions