In the Night You Had Bad Dreams – Psychological Horror – Steam

In the NIght You Had Bad Dreams incorporates as the main crux the thing I think I like most about first person viewpoint gaming. The area’s you get to search. When the main portion of the game is an assault on your ability to remember spatial directions and find your way through area’s specifically moulded to confound this sense, I get interested. Sure, the first couple of levels were literally easy as pie. Not so much the further you get into In the Night You Had Bad Dreams.

It’s not just about trying to find your way through a house which seems to have impossible inner physical dimensions. As far as I can tell, and I have yet to complete the game, the areas’ that need to searched seem three dimensionally real. What I mean by this I have made it through what I believe to be the 7th or 8th level of the game so far and as the interior of the house morphs and grows to encompass a larger and larger three dimensional space, there has been no weirdness in the way of “teleporting” or going back through a location you have already traversed to have it change in the three dimensional space before the level actually changes.

Basically I mean as you move through the levels, though the house gets larger and larger the biggest obstacle to overcome is your wayfinding ability. Some people, like myself, are good with spatial directions. If I’ve traversed some area area in reality it somehow becomes imprinted on me regardless of the miles the distance covers and I am always able to easily make it back to and from locations I’ve never been before. To wit, when I was 10 years old I went on a trip with secondary family, aunts, uncles, and their children, from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to New York, New York, the Big Apple. When arriving in New York we went to visit another aunt who lived in Manhattan. She lived near 5th Avenue and 42nd Street. Specifically she lived on 40th with her 15th floor apartment had an outside window facing a small park by the name of Bryant Park. Oddly enough and this has no bearing but the spelling of the name of the park is the same as my father’s first name. Now we only visited her home there when we first arrived. After meeting and pleasantries our travelling group was making its way to Woodside, Queens, New York. Now these locations are nowhere close to each other (Manhattan and Woodside, Queens) and as a 10 year old child first arriving in these locales I had no idea the orientation or the names of these streets.

After about a month in Queen’s living under the tyranny of an abusive thieving alcoholic uncle I decided at ten years old this was not for me. So without even an inkling of forethought I ran away, hopped on a subway that I thought was going in the approximate right direction (I never studied nor knew where New York’s subways went, and why would I having newly arrived there) but I was oddly confident and I think I talked to passersby along my way. Within a time I’m guessing was about 2 hours, though I couldn’t possibly remember how long it actually took, I arrived exactly in front of my loving aunts Manhattan apartment. Being a 10 year old innocent seeming child it was not difficult to get through the locked and manned front door up to the fifteenth 15 floor where I awaited my aunt till she got home. Again, I have no idea how long the journey took or how long I waited outside her front door but I do know that when she arrived and saw me alone she was shocked. Of course I could not be aware why she was shocked at the time but looking back I have to think it had to do with an unsupervised homeless 10 year old child roaming the area between Queens, New York and downtown Manhattan and all the possible outcomes.

It’s remembrances of the above story as well as life long experience and probably some tad of an inner degree of freedom which makes location finding a breeze for me. I always know which way is north, instinctively know where good people are or can be found, and possibly other “things” but it’s like a literal sixth sense to me.

So’s, back to the game. I made it through the first 5 or 6 levels but the levels have been getting increasingly more difficult. I stated previously that there was no “teleporting” or unknown physics in the three dimensional spaces I had been searching in the game. I lied. One of the last levels I completed had this weird 4 way intersection. It took me a few times to get through but if you take the wrong path the first time or two, it will start to lead you back the way you had come. I think I got unlucky and only chose the correct path on the final attempt but even then it became difficult because I was led to what I believed was the same 4 way intersection, which confused me. In actuality, it wasn’t. How could it be. The game would be broken if it was the case. After completing that level, the most difficult of all so far, I finally make it to that next level.

This particular next level I am pretty sure I have completely traversed all corridors, rooms, and locations exactly two times. But I still haven’t found the way out. But that’s because I haven’t told you the other elements of the game. First off, and standard, sometimes you need to search for a key to a locked door to progress. Anyone who has played any kind of first person viewpoint game knows this trope. But there’s not just keys. There’s spatial puzzles you need to solve as well. An especially difficult one was navigating a space you have only been through while the lights were on. It becomes ten times more difficult when all the sudden there are no light sources. Then there’s this other very interesting puzzle which comes in the form of the old original text based adventure and maze minding finding game Zork, which I played on release date (this will indicate my age to you fine folk out there; hint, way over 40). You need to navigate the space which you’ve physically been through the course of the gameplay, but now in the form of this text adventure game which you find on a computer in one of the rooms of the house you are seemingly and endlessly searching. And lo and behold this puzzle is a puzzle within a puzzle, which was a little difficult at first glance, but which I ultimately persevered through and solved. And this is but one of the increasingly difficult puzzles that I am being faced with because the above sequence is not three different puzzles, it’s actually a single puzzle with the elements masterfully crafted together, and it’s an easy one compared to the others I have faced so far.

So when I became “stuck” on the current level I am in of In the Night I Had Bad Dreams, I decided to stop and take a break. It’s at this point I am going to tell you another personal detail. I have dreams, and most of the time they are nightmares. I have had them since I was a child. They disturbed me greatly as a child and I believe they left lasting scars on me. Currently, I am having a very rare but recurring dream sequence. I believe recurring dreams are rare, or if they are not, they are rare to me. I regularly have dreams where I can not find my way. In my real life I think I am this master of wayfinding, but not so much in my dreams. But in my dreams there is dream logic and spatial locations and area’s do morph, change, and completely disappear on repeat traversals. In this recurring dream, which I have had at least twice now, or twice that I can remember anyways, I am trying to find my way to a certain apartment in some city but I am at large distance away from it and have to find my way. Something or someone I desperately need is in that dream apartment location, and I desperately search through cityscapes, to streetscapes, to mallscapes, to the roofs of buildings through to interconnecting basement area’s, trapdoors, puzzlesque elevator sequences, and even hidden trapdoor’s to hopefully find that ultimate location I need to make it to. In my dreams, I NEVER make it to where I need to get. I have woken up teary eyed not because I couldn’t make it to that ultimate location, but because the dream was over. Fortunately, I do have the ability to “relaunch” a dream, though this is also rare and sometimes can take a bit of time, I can sometimes relaunch that one dream, as well as become “lucid” in that dream, which seems to help immensely, but not enough to make it to the the final location. I keep thinking that if I ever do make it to that “ultimate” location, my mortal coil will finally be shuffled off, for good, but satisfyingly, and happily. Weird, right? And even weirder in these dreams everyone I meet is a known good acquaintance and we are so happy to see each other and most people are there to help me, and this also is atypical of my real life. But there are also some real bad people in these dreams I have, and I completely believe these so called dream people are not extensions of myself, but some kind of autonomous evil with no existence but to “do me in.”

Anywho, In the Night You Had Bad Dreams is a fun little game I am currently playing and there is an ultimate location to be found with an endgame, and I know I won’t be satisfied until I complete In the Night You Had Bad Dreams.

I downloaded In the Night You Had Bad Dreams from Steam and you can find the store page, developer information, game download, and discussions about the game from the following link:

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3320600/In_The_Night_You_Had_Bad_Dreams

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