Released October 12th by developer Eye Blink Twice, Time to Wake Up blends dreams and memories into a potent cocktail of fear, offering an atmospheric psychological thriller for players to explore.
After drifting off to sleep, Time to Wake Up’s main character, Alan, finds himself trapped in a dream he can’t wake up from. That’s unpleasant enough, except that’s not all. A voice drifts through the air like a sinister breeze, telling the player how much it likes their eyes, and not in a way that feels particularly complimentary.
Fortunately, the ocularly-focused voice seems willing to help Alan navigate this perplexing phantasmagorical maze. Although the voice doesn’t seem that happy to be here, it tells Alan that while he can get some shut-eye and pretend everything will be okay, it’s stuck in Alan’s “messed-up head.” Traversing memories through this dream’s twisting pathways exposes what made Alan’s head such a mess.
From a playground to a school hallway, a library, a public bathroom, and other childhood locations, Time to Wake Up offers plenty to discover. Each is dreamlike and visually appealing. Books the size of a raft drift through the air or pinwheel in place; graffiti and gigantic holes litter the walls; and a red balloon, almost certainly safe to grab, dangles from the ceiling.
“Time to Wake Up” asks an important question: are you alone in your dreams?
The places this dream takes Alan seem familiar, but they can change in the blink of an eye. Literally. Blinking, either through a mouse click or the top gamepad button on a controller, serves as a game mechanic that alters the surrounding environment, including flooding the room, resetting moving elements, and turning the room around like a Rubik’s Cube.
Time to Wake Up is a relatively short experience, offering about two hours of gameplay. The player explores each environment to solve puzzles, find a crucial object, and understand more about Alan, joined by faceless figures that fortunately don’t attack but serve as specters from the past. Will Alan be able to make peace with his past traumas? If he can’t, how will he ever wake up?
Perhaps more importantly, how dangerous is it for him to keep wandering through this nightmare?
Time to Wake Up is available now on Steam and PlayStation 5, and a 30-minute demo is also available for players to try out on itch.io.
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