Awake

Medieval castles used to be pretty big and spacious, given the fact that they usually hosted royal families and the like. However, they were not as comfy as you might believe, at least not all of them, because it takes quite a bit of effort to keep such places warm and cozy. On the other hand, the one thing they truly did offer was protection against enemies.

Awake is a first-person horror game that takes its inspiration from Slender, in the sense that your main goal is pretty much the same. As such, you have to explore a location and solve a couple of mini-quests while avoiding a monster that roams the area and kills you by simply getting close to you. It’s not a very polished game, but it can be pretty challenging to complete the missions, so it can theoretically keep you busy for a while.

As mentioned before, it all takes place in a castle of some sort, and the setting is quite spooky most of the time. The location is not that creepy, but the fact that you are constantly chased by something is pretty unsettling. On the other hand, the monster in question is very silly, not to mention the fact that it’s not animated at all, which makes it even more hilarious.

Your missions include finding keys and making your way into locked rooms, which is about as boring as you might imagine. The only decent thing about it is that sometimes you’ll be running around with the monster on your trail, and that’s pretty exciting. Even so, nothing happens once it catches you, except that the game over screen is displayed and you have to restart the game.

As for the graphics, it’s worth noting that the game uses Unreal Engine 4 to render everything, so it’s definitely quite capable. Unfortunately, there’s not much to see, because the environment is barren and devoid of anything interesting, except for the walls and the occasional chair or table. Granted, the lighting is great, but it doesn’t really help in this situation.

Even if Awake uses a state-of-the-art graphics engine, it cannot keep you interested for more than a few minutes, especially after you see how silly the monster is. The project is a bit too primitive to be worth your time at this point.