Well here it is, what I consider to be the peak of flash games, Scriptwelder's Deep Sleep trilogy, a short anthology point and click horror game collection that takes place in surreal locations within a dream. The narrative of each game in this 3 part series feeds into itself quite nicely, having their own self contained ideas to feel very distinct, but sticking to the same theme of shadowy figures in lucid dreams.
The most striking aspect of this game is what you'd expect in a good horror game, the atmosphere is absolutely on point, and makes almost every moment spent playing the game something that feels unsettling. The run down, isolated nature of the locations the player travels through combined with the haunting, droning background music makes for the feeling both of being entirely alone in an endless nightmare, but being unable to shake the feeling that you're being watched and followed the entire time. Not only does such a perfectly conflicting atmosphere tap into multiple different fears at once, but it also means that the player never really feels sure when they should be running and when they're safe. This also makes any moment where the player is having to genuinely escape a threat feel that much more effective due to the fact that you're never really sure when you should start preparing for a scare until its already happened, either that or just being in a constant state of terror.
From a gameplay perspective this is also quite good for the most part, a lot of the puzzles being clearly logical and spread out in such a way that you'll be travelling through certain locations a few times as things change around, further leaning into the horror components of the game while also giving the player things to do that make logical sense for the most part. The issue here is the fact that there'll be the odd puzzle or item that's in a needlessly obscure location or you just completely miss it because you can't see it. If this aspect were refined a bit further I'd think even higher of this, but even as it stands, there's a lot of cool puzzle solving to do while contributing to some feeling of progress, even if the surreal dreamscape obscures the exact amount of progress you're making.
Overall this is a very worthwhile way to spend an hour or so to play through, because while short and in some ways simplistic, the atmosphere and overall experience of the game is something very memorable. The occasional dud puzzle does bring the game down a bit when it clearly is what impedes progress, since you know that nothing's going to happen until you complete it, but other than that, this is great.
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