Sleepwalker

 Amiga 1200, Sleepwalker (1993) game

Playing with old technology is always a risky business as I was reminded again with this game - I'd got a good chunk of the way in and then Disk 2 corrupted, but fortunately I knew I had another original copy and was able to track it down, although I don't know if my version had been compressed down to three disks since this other version was spread across four. That solved the problem and I was able to keep going, although I wouldn't have rated it any differently had I not reached the last couple of levels, it was all pretty set for me before then. 'Sleepwalker' was another one of few I've not gone back to in recent years which covered both bases of being something I never got anywhere with as a younger gamer, and also works on the 1200, so I'd had my eye on it as potential Amiga material for this year in the same slot I played 'Impossible Mission' and its sequel last year. In the past I liked the opening title sequence where a Comic Relief tomato splats on the Ocean sign with the dialogue "Comic Relief, or some'in,'" with a nice scene-setting animation. It was always exciting to hear actual speech in games back then! As for the gameplay itself I never got off the first level, I seem to remember not quite being able to understand the telephone wires - if you or your charge are standing on one and one or the other bounces, that drops the other one through the wire, and I just didn't have the patience to work out the timings and actions needed across the level.

I'm surprised I never had the interest to give it more time and effort, but at least it remained one of those I had a connection to and have wanted to complete with superior adult skills and resilience, but in my younger self's defence we had many games to play and anything you had to complete in one sitting didn't tend to go down as well as those where progress could be saved or passwords earned. This is very much in the old-school of no saves of any kind, the only exception to that is once you reach a new level you'll only go back to the start of that one if you lose all your attempts. I think the manual also made it look more complicated than it actually was, with all these pickups with various results, when in reality most of the time if there was something required to progress, a custard pie to create a bridge for example (typical 90s non-logic: it's a comedy game so custard pies can do that!), it would be found along the path you needed to travel. The closest analogy I can think of is 'Lemmings,' except in this case you only have one lemming, the sleepwalker of the title, Lee, and rather than giving him abilities you play his dog, Ralph, who runs around like a lunatic bashing enemies, countering traps and generally trying to make each environment safe in order for Lee to pass on his oblivious way until he reaches the end of the level safely.

Now I do like the amusing animations, as while Lee is susceptible to everything out there, decreasing his sleep meter up to the point he awakes and presumably dies from shock, the dog is invulnerable and it's quite fun to see the many ways he can get burned up, electrocuted and various other animal tortures that nowadays seems somehow incongruous for a game that's a tie-in to a charity! But in the same way it was fun to see lemmings meet their end in imaginative ways, Ralph has comical animations for every trap, and it's okay, he always survives so don't worry! What I wasn't as keen on, and is a major negative, as is often the case for me, are the controls - you have fairly good and varied options in that regard, he can whack things with a cosh, jump and manipulate Lee by pushing him or holding him back, and kicking him around (and most usefully, switch places), the more momentum gained the further he can be propelled. This physics-based aspect works well and you do get a sense of weight and speed, but where things become a little more frustrating is in Ralph's jump and movement: the longer you push a direction, the faster he'll run, skidding to a halt if you push the opposite way, but I'm not sure it was precise enough, so you might prefer to lope along at a moderate pace, but it's hard to prevent yourself from getting faster. But the real issue was the jumping, which, while you could control direction in midair (ignoring the physics in that case), it was easy to jump too far in a direction and then you find yourself overshooting or maybe not going far enough.

Perhaps the most annoying move was the one where after you've walked off an edge Ralph will do that classic cartoon pause in midair with time to look down at the ground and only after that drop to his doom. And when everything is so time based it was a common frustration that you just wanted to drop to a lower platform and this routine kicks in. There was a way to shorten it by pressing down, cutting out the animation, but it remained an annoyance, being less intuitive than it should have been. Then you also have the difference between large gaps where you'd drop and small gaps where Ralph would spread his arms as a bridge, dangling across for Lee to walk right over. The levels sometimes seemed to be designed to frustrate, too, with you having to do this or that and then pivot to another action to be able to get Lee through certain areas, and that's where the skill comes in, I know, but it was very much a game of constriction, be that the time limit of the sleep meter, or the strict route through that Lee needed to be encouraged along. It was no 'Flashback,' let's put it that way, the yardstick by which I measure all 2D platform games. And yet the challenge also made me want to beat it and I wouldn't say it was exactly an unfair game - you do have these little safe areas where you can leave young Lee to walk back and forth between enclosed points while you go off and explore the level and deal with traps and other environmental issues, preparing the way for him in advance.

To some extent that gave the game a tactical side as you decide whether to scout ahead and work out the future puzzles or take a risk and keep Lee along with you as much as possible because although leaving him alone is useful, he'll still lose sleep from his meter every time he bumps into a wall, so it's not a long-term solution. Plus, while you don't have save points as such, getting to certain parts of the levels would allow you sufficient progress that you'd be rewarded by being replaced there if you lost an attempt, rather than at the start of the level (until you'd used up all your attempts, in which case it would be back to the start of that level - as in 'Aunt Arctic Adventure' you have infinite continues as long as you have the time to play, since once the computer's switched off it's right back to the first level again!). To assist, you have a map of the current level, though it only shows the parts you've already traversed, which isn't much help (unless, as I say, you scout ahead to reveal more), unless you can find a dunce cap which unlocks the whole map for you. The levels are reasonably large, but not so big as to get lost, it really is quite a linear game. I found the six environments to be fairly different, preferring the second level, Zoo, as most attractive with all those greens and yellows, plants and animals (the sound effects are quite fun and break up the silence a little, since one glaring omission is any in-game music, a real shame since the title piece was quite fun and I'd have liked to have heard more in that vein), and Kipsville Returns. In difficulty I'd put that at the top for its high-rise Lee control, closely followed by Factory, Construction Works, Grave Yard, Zoo, then Kipsville much the easiest.

While the levels are linear there is another layer of depth to proceedings as you have the added challenge of collecting the five letters that make up the word C-O-M-I-C, just to remind you there is a real world connection. Unfortunately, and this is where we come to another big issue, the program was glitchy and when I went to the trouble of collecting all the letters in the first level, Kipsville rooftops, I was taken to the bonus level where you're supposed to collect balloons, twenty of which add an extra attempt to your tally, but the main purpose is to collect pictures which form a word game, more on which in a moment. All great fun, and then you can see an animation of Lee meeting with a horrible accident in Ralph's imagination (again, strange subject matter for a charity-related product, but it's meant to allow the poor dog to let off steam for all the troubles his master has put him through, and it's only 'imagined'), but after that the game would crash, so in subsequent runs I didn't bother collecting the extras, which does make the game a little easier, but you feel like you're missing out on the full experience. I didn't try it with the second set of disks so maybe it would've worked, but by then I was intent on simply getting to the end since it is a bit of a commitment as it can take several hours to complete (though I got it down to under an hour once I knew what I was doing). I liked the idea of the word games: you'd have a picture of a lamp, followed by a '+,' then a postbox, a '-' and a box, '=.' That obviously makes lamppost, which in the animation Lee walks into, I think. There are many of these combinations to find, adding some intelligence to proceedings and greatly extending the game's lifespan.

Also adding value is the score at the end of each level, and ultimately the final score at the end of the game, which they cheekily suggest you take a photo of in the days before digital cameras made it all easy and you had to get the lighting just right to be able to get a good image of a screen (I know from the N64 era when I was photographing my times from 'The World Is Not Enough' to send to N64 Magazine's best times lists!). That would certainly increase the chances of a game being replayed after completion, especially if you had someone else to compete with over who had the best score, but I never did and so never liked high score-based gameplay, but it's nice that it's there, even if the actual scoring is impenetrable - you score for time left over, but it just gives a number so you don't know what that equates to, nor is it clear how to increase your comedy percentage. Presumably by going through traps and that sort of thing, but I never came to understand the correlation. Also adding value are two difficulty options, Easy and Hard (I completed on Easy, that was tough enough!), and the practice level, just a simple addition with directions on what to do, but I'd never tried it out before (and didn't until I'd actually finished the game, incongruently!), so it was good to see a bit more of such an old game I had a connection to from the past.

Mind you, I'd never seen almost any of the game before so it was all a learning experience, and I can say I quite enjoyed it, didn't find it a chore to play, and yet at the same time it could make my blood boil on occasion (the last level, Kipsville Returns, where you have to get Lee high into the trees and rooftops and it's easy to make a mistake and have him plunge all the way back to ground level, comes to mind...), and the glitches I mentioned meant I did feel a little on edge as if hours of progress could be ruined at a moment's notice, and I certainly felt the ticking time as I'd have hated to lose the game before I'd had a chance to finish it - I know, I should have backed up, but the original set came up as NDOS on Workbench, which I think means it's not a DOS disk and can't be copied. I didn't check the other set of disks. But I was relieved to finally get to the end and it wasn't a bad time spent, even if it is a basic platform puzzler where you have to repeat the same actions over and over until you do it right, which isn't always the most fun way to play, to say the least, but as a challenge it was fairly rewarding as you work out each section and plan out what to do, the occasional item puzzle included, or interaction with the environment, such as being turned into a bat by a vampire to reach a higher platform, or sucking on helium to make yourself into a balloon (don't try this at home, kids!), although that reminds me of another glitch...

I'd reached the fifth and penultimate level, the Factory, turned into a balloon, and then risen to the top of the screen, but somehow carried on into the ceiling which I assumed was a secret passage (there are a few here and there), but whether it was or not, I couldn't seem to go anywhere and then the game appeared to freeze, so all that progress was lost and I had to reset the machine and begin at the beginning again! For reasons like that (and the map would sometimes come up all glitchy and scrambled, making it useless, though once again we're dealing with disks over thirty years old!), I couldn't award it the accolade of being a good game. It was okay, more of a challenge to be beaten and achieved than a game of fun and potential, even while I enjoyed its charm and style, good chunky artwork, the physics, and the character of it all. Not sure there are many other Amiga titles for me to conquer now, and even less on the 1200... I have the feeling the game may even have been sold as a special Amiga 1200 Comic Relief pack so you'd buy the machine itself with 'Sleepwalker' art on the box. I don't think I imagined that. Unless I was sleepwalking myself.

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