Mr. Sleepy Man review

There’s a certain unmistakable charm that can be found in retro games. It’s part of the reason why I go back to them so often. One part of me thinks it’s the nostalgia factor - after all, those games did come out in my childhood. But it’s more than that. It’s what it looks like, what it plays like. 

Sure, it was crushingly difficult when you were a kid, and you struggled with the controls. I mean, it wasn’t until I was like 14 that I finally retried Lego Island 2: The Brickster's Revenge and beat that damn jousting minigame. Yet it’s more than feeling good about yourself for beating levels you struggled with. They were made on tight budgets, in short timeframes, by a single idea or driven by the ambition of driving the industry forward.

Some part of that is why I think it’s a major reason why developers like going back to this style of game design. It’s why we’ve seen so many indie games pop off in the past decade, like Untitled Goose Game or Hollow Knight. I feel that the populace is slowly moving away from graphic fidelity, playing what feels like the same game over and over, just reskinned. It’s why the discourse in modern gaming has seen a shift - one that tends to penalise games for looking like “UE-Slop”, but hypes up games that try a new direction to be different. 

However, there’s nothing necessarily wrong with trying to stand out, either visually or in the way it’s designed - provided the game is also fun.

For Mr. Sleepy Man, a game I played on the Nintendo Switch, it delivers that unique art style in spades - one that’s reminiscent of a late 1990s cartoon. You first wake up in a bed, standing in front of a massive guy who begs you not to mess anything up, until an objective shows up telling you to do the opposite. From the get-go, Mr. Sleepy Man tries to do something different than most games. For one, when you skip dialog, certain characters will remark about how rude it is to do that. It’s great writing, and it makes you feel like you’re interacting with it on a deeper level. 

And that leads into my second point: the objectives. You don’t have to follow what the game tells you, and while that might seem like an odd thing to say in something like an open-world game, that’s also what Mr. Sleepy Man is not - it takes the best parts of that game design and compacts it in a smaller space by giving you a series of open levels, with a bunch of smaller objectives to do. Collect pillows, scoop up cereal as your currency, hunt down more clouds for more health, or explore and discover the little ways you can interact with the world. 

That’s one thing I really loved when playing it. It felt like the developer thought of everything that a player might do when interacting with the world. Like stealing a cash register from the store and marking off a hidden objective. In fact, there are over 350 objectives throughout the game - collectibles included. The majority of these aren’t abundantly clear on how to complete, but the fun part is randomly discovering them as you’re playing through it. Focus on just the main objectives, and it’s clear the game isn’t very long. However, if you take your time playing through it and find as many hidden secrets as possible, that’s when the hours start adding up. Hands down, it’s one of its best features.

In terms of design, it’s clear the developer Devin Santi took inspiration from titles like Spyro and Super Mario 64. On its surface, beating up bad guys and collecting colored loot are akin to games like Spyro. However, where I think it shines is in the latter comparison. There are a lot of different ways you can move about the game. Running, jumping, diving; then, the deeper you go into the controls, there are ground pounds, backhopping, dashing, and so much more. And, much like Super Mario 64, it’s built for people who want more out of the game than just collecting loot and completing objectives - but for speedrunners and those who like finding hidden secrets. It’s something I deeply appreciate in games - rewarding the player who wants to slowly master its controls and get longevity out of the title they purchased - and something I appreciate Devin Santi for considering.

However, where this game unfortunately falters is in the technical aspect. In short, it’s 30fps, crashes often, and has extreme input lag on the Nintendo Switch. Given its not-so-intensive graphics and small install size, you’d think that it should run at 60fps - docked or undocked. With 60fps being the standard nowadays, it’s hard to pass it up.

Unfortunately, given the optimisation issues, it also extended into crashes. It seemed to crash every 40 minutes or so while playing handheld, and occasionally, if the game hadn’t auto-saved, it’d set me back an objective. For something that feels designed to be a casual and fun experience, these moments were the complete opposite. Each time, I just put the game down, did something else, and came back to it a few hours later - something to clear my head from that frustrating experience.

The other thing I cannot get over is the input lag. The game doesn’t necessarily have the most intense platforming, but when it requires you to do something like running up a winding path, dodging rolling obstacles, or playing ping-pong with an enemy’s attack, it still requires you to have precise timing. Fall off one too many times, and by the time you’ve tried turning right, you’ve already walked forward off the edge. Miss reflecting the enemy’s attack because the game doesn’t register it fast enough, you’re restarting that boss fight - over and over again. It’s something I hope to see fixed in the near future, because it’s a great game for playing handheld, sitting on your couch and having a lazy afternoon. But at times, it feels like you’re battling both enemies and the game itself.

While I really do love Mr. Sleepy Man - the overall game design, art style, and the design choice to give you hours of playtime by simply finding and completing its hundreds of objectives - the technical downsides of 30fps gameplay, frequent crashes and input lag make for a somewhat jarring experience on the Nintendo Switch. With an optimisation tweak in the future, I’m sure it’s something that can be fixed and make those hours feel as chill as the game wants itself to be.