UNTIL YOU WAKE UP

Most modern video games are criticized for being too easy, especially when it comes to shooters, or even adventure games. There was a time when the term “adventure” was immediately associated with LucasArts productions, which meant great stories and tough puzzles. Nowadays, adventure games provide people with much more freedom, but there’s no real challenge anymore, at least not usually.

UNTIL YOU WAKE UP is an apparently simple game that looks like a classic top-down RPG with 8-bit graphics, except that you soon discover just how unforgiving everything about the game is. In short, this is a puzzle game in which you have to figure everything out yourself, including what your overall purpose is. The interface is point & click, so at least you do not have to worry about this aspect, but everything else might take you a while to understand.

The story is pretty sketchy as well, especially since it doesn’t make too much sense in the beginning, at least until you solve a few puzzles and watch a couple of static cutscenes. As it would appear, your task is to escape from a facility, and to do so you have to work with a variety of mechanisms. It doesn’t get any simpler later on, but at least you slowly begin to understand your goal.

Each room is different from the last, but the way you navigate between them can be a tad disorienting. Hence, you might need a bit of time to figure out how to retrace your steps, because it’s important to know where everything is if you want to solve the mystery. On the other hand, you just need a bit of practice and a lot of patience, given the fact that the low-resolution graphics do not allow for too much detail.

Speaking of which, the visual aspect is about as simple as you would expect, although that doesn’t hurt the experience at all. In fact, the simplicity is actually quite helpful, especially since it helps with navigation. You should know that there are some disturbing scenes in there as well, even if blood is not that impressive when there’s only a few pixels of it on the entire screen.

In the end, UNTIL YOU WAKE UP can put you through hell if you are not accustomed to such a high difficulty level. However, there’s nothing better than finally figuring out the solution to a tough puzzle.