We all remember a time when tower defence was a fad. Not unlike Battle Royale is today, soon after Plants Vs. Zombies became a hit, tower defence saw many clones pop up everywhere. Sleep Tight takes the classic Tower Defense genre and mixes it up with Twin Stick Shooting, where the tower you are protecting is you. Does this mix work? Let’s find out.
Sleep Tight is a twin-stick shooter with base building and strategy game developed and published by indie devs We Are Fuzzy. The game was released for the PC and Nintendo Switch on the 26th of July 2018.
SLEEP TIGHT
DETAILED REVIEW
Story & Narrative
Sleep Tight is a fun game which will take you to your childhood days where monsters were real and you were the sole defender. The game takes place in your bedroom, with waves of monsters trying to attack you every night. Its a twin stick shooter with base building and power up elements. Here you have to kill monster waves at night and upgrade yourself at morning.
Gameplay & Mechanics
The base building requires strategy and utilization of your currency. Unlike me who used all his currency to upgrade stuff and on research and forgot to buy ammo, you should carefully upgrade your weapons, and defences while leaving enough so that you can defend yourself. There are 2 other in-game currencies from which you can buy and upgrade stuff i.e sun and stars. For research, you need a combination of star and suns. While stars will be dropped by killing monsters, suns are rewarded for surviving the night.
As the waves pass the monster quantity as well as the monster variety increases too. There are various varieties of monsters i.e regular monsters, speed monster as the name suggest they are fast and small, tank are big and slow with a lot of health.
A layer of tactic is added by the fact that each corner of the bedroom is used for a certain function. You’ll heal at one, research tech and perks at another, and equip a shiny new weapon at the next. As a knock-out means ‘Game Over’, risking your life to swap out guns mid-wave isn’t possible – but boxing yourself into a corner with your own defences is a possibility and a valid tactic.
There are 12 unlockable characters. Joe is the first character you will play with. You have to complete many different challenges to unlock characters. Different characters have different power-ups and downs like some character give you research discount, some will give you large ammo etc. Mix and match the character according to your liking. While all of that might keep you interested to let’s say up to wave 15, but it becomes a chore around the 20-25 mark.
Graphics & Performance
Before I say anything, there is one thing that bothered me the most, which was irrespective of whether you are a boy or girl the room looks and remains the same. There should be different room according to kid personality, which would have added some visual variety to the game. Apart from that visually the game looks good. It has an isometric top-down camera view along with a soft pixel cartoon design (think Splatoon). Character models are very well designed and the personality of every kid does show in the way he or she has dressed at least.
When it comes to crunching the number, I was getting 100+ fps without any lag or any problem. I didn’t get any bugs game ran very smoothly, even on extended game time.
Music of game very pleasing and works with game setting. While the ambient music is good too, monster voice (like the monsters themselves) can become irritating later on in the game.
VERDICT
Sleep Tight is a very fun and light game meant for casual play. The game ran smooth and without any hiccups. The only con is there is only one room (map) and gets repetitive after some time. Otherwise, it’s a solid entry.