Until last night I was convinced that the Silent Hill series were the only games that could truly scare me. However, after experiencing Insomniac, my perception has been drastically changed.
I decided to play through Insomniac in bed last night. My wife lay beside me; it is midnight. The lights are out, and all there is to see is the dim glow of the laptop screen. I begin the game.
Without giving away too much (which is very easy to do), I would like to talk about a couple of things that stood out to me. First, the game simply and forcefully directed and manipulated my emotions through the use of brevity and expressiveness in dialogue. Although there were numerous grammatical errors, the storyline did not suffer (albeit distracting me a bit from the thrust of the game). Second, the game capitalized on fear by its use of music. Oh my wow. Insomniac was terrifying for this reason alone.
Another thing the game did well was knowing its limitations -- that is, Insomniac never seemed too drawn out, nor did it stop before full maturation. I concur with the author's decision of the length of the game.
Although amateurish in some ways, Insomniac pushes through its shortcomings and delivers an exceptionally terrifying experience, and a horror-inducing storyline to boot. Play this one with the lights off, with headphones, and late at night.
Insomniac was created by AidanAK47 for the Ludum Dare 27 competition.
platform utilized: mac
genre: visual novel, horror
where to find: Download Insomniac for mac or pc.
