FEATURES


murdered sleep is a psychological horror/survival horror adventure game with light RPG elements. You'll explore real world locations that unpredictably shift into the dark, twisted mirror of the nightmare world that is Backstage (liminal spaces that would be labeled 'The Backrooms' years after the release of the original Backstage), fending off terrifying warped monsters with improvised weapons and scavenged ammo, managing your Health and Nerve with limited resources, solve simple puzzles and struggle to discern what's real and what's delusion as a dark story of sinister occult forces unfolds.

  • Tense Real Time Combatmurdered sleep abandons the traditional turn-based combat one might expect from a typical RPG Maker game in favor of brutal and unforgiving real time ARPG combat. Defend yourself with sharp whatever sharp objects you find at hand, tasers, various firearms and a speargun. Increase your stats with better armor and sacred charms. Dodge enemy projectiles and sadistic traps by managing your limited Stamina Meter to quickly sprint. Be quick, and be careful, because Anna is fragile, and not just physically. 
  • Nerve System. In lieu of the traditional 'Sanity Meter' seen in Lovecraftian horror adventures like Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem and the Call of Cthulhu Tabletop RPGs that inspired them (because it's difficult for someone to go from 'perfectly sane' to having a laundry list of serious psychiatric disorders over the course of one bad night, but panic attacks can be triggered in a matter of seconds), manage your Nerve against terrifying threats. Run out of Nerve and you hallucinate wildly, whiff attacks, can't regenerate Stamina and take extra damage from all attacks until you manage to calm your rattled nerves and catch your breath.
  • Classic Resource Management. Like you'd expect from a classic Survival Horror experience, you must manage your Health and Nerve with useful healing items and making strategic use of limited first aid cabinets that fully heal you. Take ephedrine to restore your Health, but watch out for its effect on your Nerve. Smoking Cigarettes restores a little Nerve but is bad for your Health, or risk drinking booze to regenerate Nerve without damaging Health, but be ware that being drunk makes it hard to see or aim well.  
  • Liminal Horror Journey Through A Twisted Mirror World. As you explore, the world phases in and out of seemingly ordinary, mundane locations and the nightmarish mirror-world of Backstage, a twisted hellscape carpeted with rot, rust, and dried blood. What is real, what is nightmare, and what is both?
  • Dual Protagonists. In the tradition of classic Resident Evil cames. Play from the secondary perspective of Templar witch-hunter Chris Marlowe in Interlude episodes with a greater focus on action and dishing out violence using specialized tools for killing witches and their demon servants, like shotguns with rocksalt shells and a consecrated silver sword. 
  • Easy Mode. An Easy Mode has just been included for players who want to experience the dark and twisted psychological story while mitigating the potential frustration that comes with brutal real-time combat and resource management. Easy mode triples Anna's base Health and provides an infinitely reusable Sharp Object for self-defense.   
  • Deeply Immersive Soundtrack. Densely layered bespoke ambient soundscapes join forces with haunting, ominous, menacing and/or pulse-pounding music by DavidKBD, monoaudze, Scott Arc, Joel Steudler, and more, running the gamut from lo-fi drones to rich dark ambient to doom metal to darkwave.   
  • Multiple Endings. Earn one of six completely distinct endings depending on your choices and actions throughout the approximately eight-hour campaign: determine the fate and destinies of each major and supporting character as well as the Backstage universe itself, as you take into your own hands the age-old question of "who will survive and what will be left of them"?

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