Suicide Guy: Sleepin’ Deeply
Game Details
Title: Suicide Guy: Sleepin Deeply
Developer: Fabio Ferrara
Publisher: Chubby Pixel
Website: https://chubbypixel.com/games/suicide-guy-sleepin-deeply/
Genre: Adventure, Action, Platformer, Puzzle
Platform: Nintendo Switch
Audience: 16+
Release Date: 25/10/2018
Price: £5.39 – Rapid Reviews UK were very kindly provided with a review code for this title. Currently on offer for £2.69.
What the Developers say
In this new chapter of “Suicide Guy” you’ll be challenged with even more insane puzzles, generated by the surreal dreams of the Guy. You’ll encounter the weirdest of the living beings as you go deeper and deeper into his subconscious. This time to wake him up you’ll need all your skills.
Features
3 to 4 hours of pure gameplay set inside Suicide Guy’s subconscious
A whole new story with an unexpected plot twist
Physics based levels
Ultimate moves: able to pick up items, throw them, activate mechanisms and even burp.
Funny creatures to annoy
Vehicles to drive
New Collectible items to find
Introduction
The Nintendo Switch eShop has been blamed for having poor quality indies thrust upon it, and unfortunately Suicide Guy: Sleepin’ Deeply is one of those. This deeply unsettling adventure makes light of suicide and tries to make it fun with a burp button and a cartoon art style. If it was going for satire, it failed miserably because frankly, my head’s spinning from the thought of simply playing this horrific game.
In this trippy nightmare, you play as the Guy, an alcoholic who has a deeply unsettling dream. Throughout Sleepin’ Deeply, you play through multiple scenarios that all end with the character’s death. That’s the goal: to kill yourself. You go through a bunch of puzzles and platforming challenges, and that’s the end result. Pretty tasteless, if you ask me. However, there is some semblance of good game design hidden underneath this horrific experience.
Audio & Visual
Suicide Guy: Sleepin’ Deeply’s visuals and audio perfectly compliment the awful concept. The soundtrack is unpleasant with repetitive melodies, overall, and high pitch notes that play over and over during a toy based level. During the third level, the music didn’t even play at all. The sound effects are implemented poorly. Suicide Guy’s voice sounds like a monster rather than a human being, and his footsteps are too overbearing on the ears. He grunts every single time he jumps, and a ping sound occurs whenever you pick an item up. The sound effects don’t sound natural to the world at all; some are too loud for the space that Suicide Guy is standing at. Little aspects of the sound design all add up to make this adventure a real grind to tackle.
The levels look very plain. You can tell the budget was low on this game as it doesn’t look refined. It looks washed out, and the art style isn’t cohesive. The physics also looked odd at points, especially during an opening cutscene, in which a boat hits a monster’s eye and unnaturally falls off. Items you grab also look unnatural as they float in the air in front of your character. The frame rate struggled at a few points while in handheld mode.
However, the toy level is quite interesting. Throughout a bedroom of some kind, you have to jump your way across cups, sugar cubes, magnetic platforms, and more. You’re on the clock as a ball around you is going through obstacles and in the end, hits a trigger that releases a shotgun blast, killing your character. The overly sweet melody of this level matched with this horrible act is somewhat horrific, but it’s by far the most interesting level in the game visually.
Gameplay & Replayability
Fabio Ferrara, the developer of Suicide Guy: Sleepin’ Deeply, had some good ideas spread throughout, but it lacks the polish needed to make a fun platformer. The first issue is the controls. They’re floaty, and the game’s in a view that a platformer should never be in the first person. Time and time again, I couldn’t make a jump due to a slip of the analogue stick or a slightly imprecise jump. Another first-person platformer, Mirror’s Edge, works because the jumps felt solid and you knew how far its central character Faith could go. Suicide Guy, as he grunts with every single jump, lacks precision. The second issue comes from its grab mechanics. It had physics issues with the environment around the object, making the game frustrating to play at points, and it’s not that fun to drag and drop objects with you throughout the level.
However, the puzzles are actually solid. For example, during the desert level, you have to figure out how to get across from one area to the next with the items you have. Over time, you get more available to you, and there’s a mechanic you have to figure out that allows you to blend two items. It’s quite well thought out. I also liked the idea of the race to get to the shotgun before the contraption in the toy area. Ferrara has the promise of being a good designer, but he needs the polish to make a game like this shine. While the overall goal of killing yourself in multiple ways is unsettling, Suicide Guy: Sleepin’ Deeply does have an interesting foundation of level design.
Conclusion
This game is a full-on nightmare that I couldn’t wait to wake up from. The graphics are as gross as the main character’s ketchup-stained shirt, the sound effects make my ears ring, and the overall concept of this game is deeply unpleasant. It may have a few good ideas here and there, but I’d recommend staying as far away from this game as possible. Unlike this Suicide Guy, I’m staying sober.
Rapid Reviews UK Rating
You can purchase Suicide Guy: Sleepin’ Deeply from the Nintendo eShop on the following link, https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-download-software/Suicide-Guy-Sleepin-Deeply-1459376.html#Overview
Octogeddon
