Sleep Is Death: Unlimited Possibilities

Sometimes I play Dungeons and Dragons.  There, I said it.  I’m always surprised when I meet someone who also plays or has played.  It generally comes up in conversation very quietly and uneasily – like we’re both revealing some dark secret about ourselves.  I feel like there needs to be some secret handshake for identification purposes.

We’re uneasy about talking about playing Dungeons and Dragons for a reason.  It’s earned an uber-nerd label.  Only losers and/or people who smell funny play the game.  They dress up and run around beating each other with sticks in their mother’s basement.  Well, those people are indeed out there. 

While we’re still nerds, the majority of people who play D&D play it for the game, not for an escape from reality.  D&D is a game with almost no limits and lets creative people have a lot of fun.  The game has rules but those rules only exist to give it some “real-world” framework—the same way that inertia, gravity, and other forces exist as rules of real life.

In D&D one person plays as the dungeon master (DM).  The DM is the narrator of the game and also plays as the referee.  The DM describes the world, tells the story, responds to the actions of the players, and creates an exciting world for them to explore.

If the players of a D&D session find themselves facing a locked door it’s up to them to decide how to proceed.  It’s then the DM’s judgment as to what rules should be applied to the door and how to respond to the players’ decision.  If the players decide that they want to try and break the door down, the DM may declare that the players must make a “strength check” to see if they have the brawn to do so.  Or the players may simply decide to walk away from the door completely and head to a nearby town.  The DM must then quickly describe the town and create the scenery (with words) within the town. 

It’s this open narrative that makes Dungeons and Dragons such a remarkable game.  It truly is only limited by the imagination of its players and the person playing as dungeon master.  Generally DMs have a story  created ahead of time and it’s up to them to steer the players along its plot, though there’s no way the DM can ever be fully prepared or predict what the players will decide to do.

It’s this free flowing narrative that I instantly thought about when I heard about the computer game Sleep is Death.  It’s a game where two people, on different computers, create and play through a story.  The story occurs in a flip book style, with each player taking different sides of the chronicle.  One player takes on the role of controller.  He creates the scene, adds objects to the scene, and leads the other player through a story of their creation.  The other player responds to the controller’s actions – either by deciding to play along or forcing the controller to react to unexpected choices.

Each turn in Sleep is Death lasts for 30 seconds.  The controller has that time to set the scene and illustrate the player’s actions.  The player then has 30 seconds to either have a character talk (via speech bubbles) or instruct a character to perform an action by writing out a verb.  For example, if you want your character to sit down on a chair you type in an action box “sit” and point it at the chair.  On the controller’s next turn they have 30 seconds to manipulate the player’s character so that it sits in the chair.


Sleep is Death comes with a database of items, rooms, and scenes.  With a pixel builder you may also design your own.  You can also edit existing objects to get them to respond to the player’s demands.  Using the previous example, you can bend the character’s legs to make it look like it’s sitting on the chair.

Sleep is Death is exciting and terrifying when you play the role of controller.  Like running a game of Dungeons and Dragons, you have no idea of how the player is going to act in your story.  You may want the player to walk down the street but instead he decides to knock on a neighbor’s door.  You then have 30 seconds to create the inside of the neighbor’s home, design the neighbor himself, and continue the story in some fashion—or try and steer the player back to the plot you had in mind. 


Unlike Dungeons and Dragons where you’re using words to describe the action, Sleep is Death, being a computer game, requires that you actually draw and build the new scene – quite a daunting feat with a 30 second time limit.  Ultimately it’s up to you to write a story that will maintain the player’s interest,but also keep in mind that the player may go off the path deliberately to test your narration reflexes. 

I first tried Sleep is Death with Liz.  I started working on the story and designing the physical elements I wanted to use in the game (the object database didn’t have any zombies).  I quickly became bogged down by aiming too high and being too concerned with creating an ambitious story.  I was forgetting that Liz would be telling the story as much as me.   Like a tennis match she and I would be hitting the tale back and forth at each other.  If I tried to force her into something linear, she would probably be more likely to deviate from that path.

I decided on a story where Liz played as a woman stranded in the middle of nowhere when her car breaks down and catches fire.  I did set somewhat of a compulsory path in that she would be forced to walk through a dying wood, through a grave yard, and would end up at scary-looking house.  Depending on what Liz decided to do, I was going to have her come across a skeleton holding a shotgun, and/or have multiple zombies erupt from the graves in the cemetery.  In the house I had arranged a cult of scary children dressed in white standing around a dead body.  They would be chanting an evil incantation where they intended to summon an evil spirit to wreak havoc across the land – or something like that.  And because every silly horror story must have a clichéd ending, I arranged it so the whole thing would turn out to be the imagination of a bored store clerk reading a book.  Oh, and just before we started playing Liz asked that I give her a sidekick – Juno, one of our cats.

Check out the flipbook of the horror story with Liz.

Well, it didn’t work out quite as I had designed.  Primarily since this was the first time I had played with a person, I wasn’t quite as thoroughly prepared as I thought I was.  Liz was good about not throwing too many random ideas at me but even then I had a hard time keeping up with her.  There were a few turns where I didn’t do anything at all as I was busy trying to manipulate an object to meet Liz’s actions and ran out of time. 

The same went for Liz as well.  She found the 30 second time limit too short to type out dialogue after she had come up with what she wanted to say.  She also wanted to be able to list more actions; though with my own struggles with the 30 second time limit, I’m glad she couldn’t.  Plus with her small netbook monitor, she thought the shotgun I had laid out was a guitar…

I then had Liz try the story I had written for our friend Chris.  Chris and I had planned to play Sleep is Death that weekend and I had put together a story about a rookie firefighter responding to various emergencies.  This next game went a little better but again I found that I had too many elements in each scene and had a hard time managing them all.  As Liz the firefighter reentered a burning home, I loaded that screen back up again and forgot to remove a little girl from the scene.  The girl had already been rescued and was supposed to be waiting outside.

The flipbook of the firefighter story with Liz.

These glitches aside, I learned a lot from our first sessions with the game.  For one, the long scripts of dialogue I had written for these stories were useless.  Speech bubbles in the game can be obtrusive as they block objects and scenery.  Also, I simply didn’t have time to respond to Liz’s actions and write out long lines of dialogue.  Going forward, I would need to stick with short sentences. 

Most importantly, after some internet research into Sleep is Death I found something that would be revolutionary for future sessions: editing an .ini file of the game would allow me to extend the time limit on turns.  I didn’t want to extend the limit by a huge amount as that would change the intent of the game but an extra 60 seconds would mean a lot to the quality of the stories we were creating.

As the weekend approached and my game session with Chris loomed, I wanted to create one more story.  I wanted something a bit more free-form since I had extended the turn time limit.  My first two scenarios of a random horror story and the firemen responding to various emergencies were very restrictive as far as where the player was allowed to go.  The idea of the player being a bird came to mind and I soon created a backyard scene with many birds around a feeder, flitting about the area, and an old woman.  This time I didn’t want to force the player in any particular direction.  I created some sky scenes, some other yards, and the inside of the old woman’s house to try and be ready for Chris’s choices.  I had a few random props to throw into the story as well: a huge flock of red birds to take over the scene, a parrot side-kick, some sketchy crows, and a large bald-eagle.  While the player wouldn’t have infinite freedom, I hoped to provide a bit more room.

The flipbook of the horror story with Chris.

The flipbook of the firefighter story with Chris.

The flipbook of the bird story with Chris.

The flipbook of the bird story with Liz.

After some technical difficulties where I went well beyond my skill set and had to learn about forwarding wireless router ports, Chris and I sat down to play.  This time around as controller, with a longer time limit, the game was a much better experience for me.  I really felt like I had the time to respond to the Chris’s demands without sequences of inaction or incomplete responses in dialogue.  In the initial horror story narrative there are a few screens where nothing happens but that’s because I had forgotten to change a setting.  Overall the stories we made were goofy, but went smoothly.  I reused a few one-liners I had said in the stories with Liz and Chris brought his own style of humor, such as making his firefighter character a kung-fu maniac. 

There remain a few glitches in the stories. For instance, in the firefighter story Chris (and Liz) encountered an arguing couple.  I had a set sequence of actions in mind and I never gave the players a chance to change the direction of the events that were unfolding.  Also, the bird story wasn’t as free-form as I thought it would be; though that’s easier said than done. But I think the players got to move around more than in previous stories.  I think for any future sessions with Sleep is Death I’d like to create a scenario where the player is truly liberated to do whatever he wants.  In these sessions I often bullied the player into following the plot I had laid out.  Going forward, I have to remind myself that we both are creating the story and it’s okay if the narrative mutates into something different than what I had in mind.

While not perfect, Sleep is Death is an extraordinary game.  Its time limit inspires creativity from both the player and the controller.  Though, this restriction also makes creating a serious story hard.  You often have to pull random objects to respond to player choices.  Exposition is impossible since the player always gets a turn to respond to the controller’s actions – there are no cut scenes and there’s limited opportunity for narration.  It’s easy to fall into clichés like dream sequences and general wackiness to explain away sudden changes in plot.

Sleep is Death is not a game I’m interested in playing with strangers.  As a controller you need the player to give you a little bit of slack in your storytelling.  As a player you need compassion for the controller’s plight and to make decisions you think they will be able to follow through on.  You’re making this story together and the ad-lib nature of the program will lead to some disjointedness.  That’s something a stranger may not be as flexible with as a friend will be.

Going back to my original Dungeons and Dragons analogy, I now appreciate that game a lot more.  As a dungeon master in D&D it’s much easier to respond to player actions with words rather than having to create digital representations of the story as a controller in Sleep is Death. 

If you enjoy telling stories and sharing those stories with other people, I recommend getting a copy of Sleep is Death.  Each purchase of the game comes with two licenses so you can give a free copy to a friend.  See what crazy narratives you can create with each other.  I guarantee you’ll go in unforeseen directions.

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