“Sleep Awake” Review – Gary Numan Makes a Brief Appearance in This Overly Simplistic, Sleep-Deprived Horror

Video games in 2025 offered a plethora of unique and spectacular experiences, from a whimsical world brimming with magical creatures to an impressively detailed depiction of feudal Japan. Yet, as the year winds down, some intriguing highlights emerge. The psychological horror title “Sleep Awake” centers around synth rock innovator Gary Numan, who takes on the rather dull role of a colossal floating head known as Hypnos.

This unexpected cameo doesn’t fully represent the overall tone of the game. The hours leading to Numan’s appearance are filled with melancholy rather than chaos. Players navigate through the decaying streets of what may be the final city on Earth. This setting showcases a remarkable level of creativity. The story unfolds through the perspective of a young woman named Katya, who traverses rooftops, surveys the desolate wasteland, and delves into convoluted alleyways. The darkness and surreal logic echo the haunting underground engravings of Italian artist Piranesi.

How did Earth become so uninhabitable, leading to the extinction of life? That’s a mystery we’ll never uncover. Instead, Katya grapples with immediate dangers. Falling asleep poses a threat of vanishing into a bizarre, unreachable realm due to a condition known as Hush. Like others endlessly fatigued in this world, Katya instills arousal serum drops into her eyes. Instantly, she is flooded with psychedelic visions and a riot of colors. It appears her plans are slipping away, much like everyone else’s. The remnants of society have been obliterated by the sleep-deprived paranoia of rival factions.

Initially driven by a desire to care for an aging relative, Katya navigates the game’s haunting, decaying environments from a first-person viewpoint. At one stage, you find yourself on a cultist’s territory, wearing a gas mask, prompting you to sneak past them by crouching under walls or surfaces to stay out of sight. But the tension is minimal; enemies follow predictable patrol paths with extremely wide detection ranges. Ultimately, this makes for a lackluster game of hide and seek.

“Sleep Awake” further disappoints in its gameplay innovation. Tasks include rolling a cart to short-circuit an electrical breaker and locating conveniently placed keycards to unlock doors. Gradually, the city’s illumination fades, revealing that you are progressing through a beautifully adorned tunnel. Surprisingly, this tunnel resembles an amusement park ghost train—light, engaging, but not particularly frightening.

This is unfortunate because “Sleep Awake” is visually striking. The exploration is interspersed with dark yet gorgeous FMV sequences, showcasing eerie silhouettes of trees against a blood-red sky and showcasing bubbling liquids in extreme close-up. At times, these unsettling visuals blend seamlessly with actual 3D environments, achieving a beautifully surreal arthouse aesthetic. This surreal vibe extends to the death screens, where being struck in the head by an enemy causes you to step out of darkness toward a brilliantly lit door. As you do so, the space morphs in real-time, resembling a hallucination, culminating in an auto-save.

The death screen stands out as a rare instance where “Sleep Awake” captures something reminiscent of dream logic and the peculiar, blurred moments between states of wakefulness and sleep. Most of the time, this narcoleptic nightmare merely showcases its psychedelic aesthetics (complete with the floating Numan), lacking interactive depth. Overall, it’s too straightforward and lacks intrigue in critical areas. You might find yourself ready to sleep now.