FEAR OF SLEEP: Game Creator on Making an Old-School Sci-Fi Horror Game

Introduction

FEAR OF SLEEP is a sci-fi psychological horror game set in a world of permanent war. Underneath the earth, the United Republic of North America (or, URNA) has created a military bunker the size of a metropolitan city. Military personnel constitute the majority of the population in this world, and they live their lives underground because the surface is nearly uninhabitable.

They report to the surface for combat duty and return to the Metrobunker for leave if they are among the lucky few to survive. On this slice of the timeline, the Metrobunker is being primed for a surface breach by "Dominion" forces. The vision was to create a horror experience that doesn't rely on traditional structure or hand-holding, but instead trusts the player to interpret, explore, and piece things together themselves.

It's about uncertainty, perception, and the fear of not fully understanding what’s happening to you. The inspiration comes from psychological horror, hard sci-fi concepts around consciousness and neural interfaces, and the unsettling nature of corrupted systems, where something familiar starts behaving in ways it shouldn't. Sometimes that something familiar is you.
Sci-fi and horror intersect through the rules of the world.

The technology is grounded and believable, but when it begins to fail or behave unpredictably, that's where the horror emerges. It's less about monsters than it is about the dread that comes from losing grip on the infrastructure and institutions we take for granted.

What makes the project unique is its commitment to player-driven discovery. There are no traditional safety nets, no objective markers, no explicit tutorials. The game communicates through its world, not through UI. If you like the feeling of reward you get when something "clicks," this game is made for you. It's for tinkerers, explorers, and people who just want to figure things out for themselves.

It is also tailor-made for those who appreciate atmospheric and psychological horror, and who enjoy it when a game respects their intelligence. Players can expect a tense, immersive experience where observation and interpretation are key, and a mystery unfolds only to the degree that they are paying attention. Being someone who is a game artist before an indie dev, the fact that the game design is always filtered through an artistic perspective lends well to the immersion when interfacing with the game's systems.

Narratively, the world you inhabit is one I have spent years writing about in my free time, so I don't spend any time on exposition to justify the events of this world to myself while explaining them to you. The world just is as it is, and you're in it. What is unique about this game, as opposed to other retro-inspired, fixed camera horror games, is the commitment to having all of its systems play out physically in the world you inhabit.

Puzzles do not happen under the hood coding-wise, where there are inventory items to glue together, combination lock minigames, etc, but rather analogue, tactile, physical environmental interactions that the player interfaces with directly. The environment isn't baked down onto a rigid layer the player walks on top of, but rather, the player themselves are physically integrated with their surroundings.

For example, in some games, you may be required to find a key card on a dead soldier. You collect that card, add it to your inventory, bring it to the locked door, open your inventory, and use the item. In this game, you physically grab the ragdoll of that dead soldier and drag him to the door for it to register his organic signature and specific clearance, then you drop him in a heap. As little noise as possible to the signal from players' thoughts to inputs as possible.

The Development Process

The game is being developed in Unreal Engine, primarily for its real-time rendering capabilities and flexibility when it comes to lighting and atmosphere. Also, being coded in Blueprint, it was the easiest way for me to stand a prototype up by myself, and now that I have a coder, it is more artist-friendly for me to tweak code/design as I make the game.

A big part of development involved creating custom solutions to support the design philosophy. For example, interaction systems were built to function without traditional UI prompts, meaning the environment itself has to communicate what's possible, however subtly.

One of the more interesting parts of development was how much time was spent removing features. Instead of adding more guidance, the process involved stripping things back until the experience felt intuitive without explanation. I'm able to push and pull what is and isn't obvious to the player by crafting the context around them.

Another key focus was developing a consistent visual and environmental language, making sure players can learn how the world works purely through observation. That required a lot of iteration, testing, and reworking how information is presented.

The Style of the Game

The retro-inspired style is a deliberate choice to enhance the psychological aspects of the game. Lower-fidelity visuals introduce ambiguity, which makes the experience more unsettling. When things aren't clear, the player's mind fills in the gaps, and that's where a lot of the horror comes from. What comes to mind is playing Diablo 2 as a kid.

The zombies were muddy sprites, and you couldn't describe in detail any of their features, but because of that, your mind's eye made them as grotesque as possible. This is because your imagination is always more vivid than reality, and things like sound design and animation really flesh out what you think you're looking at.

It also ties into the themes of the game. The world itself is about corrupted systems and degraded experiences, so the visual style reinforces that idea. It can feel like you're navigating something unstable or broken down. The inspiration comes from early 3D horror games, PS1-era aesthetics, and analog distortion, where imperfections in the image actually add to the atmosphere rather than detract from it.

The most important reason, which is more of a technical answer that artists and devs will appreciate, is what the forced pixelization allows for artistically, while reducing scope. This allows me to focus on the broad read of the environments: the lighting, emissive details, color, and shape, etc. I can use assets of disparate quality because it is more about the cinematic vantage point and overall artistic composition than it is about the fidelity of individual set pieces.

The Main Mechanics

The core mechanics revolve around exploration, observation, and interaction with the environment, but without explicit instruction. Players aren't given tutorials or objectives in the traditional sense. Instead, they learn by paying attention to how the world behaves. Systems are consistent, but they aren't explained up front. Principally, I wanted to completely remove any meta-narrative, any suggestion that there is ever a difference between Roy, the protagonist, and you, the player.

Experientially, I wanted every single mechanic to feel like something you figured out on your own. I give you the tool, suggest through context what the tool does, and let you fiddle with it until you go, "Oh, that's what that does!” The main reason for this is that when I feel like UI is bossing me around, I get turned off right away. I don't want every window I can climb through to be draped with yellow ribbons. It annoys me. If you go back and play games that–at the time, weren't considered "hardcore," or even relatively difficult, none of these "quality of life" features were present or even expected.

Call me a hipster, a boomer, old-fashioned, whatever else, but I would much rather replay Shadow of the Colossus on my PS2 and 4:3 Trinitron for the 20th time than I would play most AAA single-player games today. From a genre-specific standpoint, this approach came from the idea that fear is strongest when you don't fully understand what's happening, and when you aren't on sure footing.

By removing safety nets, players are placed in a position where they have to trust their instincts and interpretations. It creates a more personal experience. Players aren't just following directions, they actively inhabit the world.

Environmental Manipulation

Environmental manipulation is about interacting with the world in ways that feel grounded and meaningful. Objects, spaces, and changes in the environment all serve a purpose. They're not just decorative. Many of the things that are just decorative can still be manipulated and toyed with… because it's fun! Instead of telling the story directly, the narrative is embedded in the environment. Players uncover it by noticing patterns, inconsistencies, and details in the world.

Clues are scattered throughout in propaganda, posters, fliers, dead communications, field manuals, and the shaping of the environment itself. These bits of information are not exposition. They are pieces of the world you are in, which you are responsible for digesting. Often, you will find something relevant to the world, indifferent to the player, that has embedded within it a certain puzzle logic or suggestion on what you might do next.

The idea is that players build their own understanding over time. Nothing is explicitly spelled out, but everything is there if you're paying attention. Additionally, once a mechanic clicks for you, it is added to your toolkit, so to speak, and the permutations of how these simple interactions combine become more and more satisfying and fun as you add new ones to the mix.

The world spends no time explaining itself to you, and the personal story being told is similarly written between the lines. Without giving away too much: "cutscenes" are playable interstitials, vignettes the player is encouraged, but not required, to explore and engage with to fit the personal narrative together.

Conclusion

For beginner developers:

• Focus on finishing projects, big or small. You don't know how fast you can run a mile unless you cross the finish line.
• Be intentional with your design. Every feature should serve a purpose. Default to the rule of "Chekov's Gun."
• Limit yourself. Constraints breed creativity.
• Build something that reflects your own perspective, and if you are doing something well trodden, add something interesting to the formula.
• Learn to cut features that don't strengthen the experience, and limit scope to what you know you can manage.
• The KISS method is king: Keep it simple, silly!
• Consistency and discipline trump a fit of creative inspiration 10 times out of 10.

And remember: A game made for everyone is a game made for no one. As for following the game, players can stay updated through X/Twitter, come to the Discord to hang out and provide feedback (we don't bite!), and follow the Steam page for updates and new trailers! Or, email me directly: konradhoney@gmail.com.

Konrad Honey, Lead Weapon Artist & Game Director

Interview conducted by Emma Collins