Vidjama Gmaes Work

It’s your story and you’ll cry whether you want to or not.

Baby Blues Nightmares is an upcoming horror game doing what all the games are doing right now; pushing out a prologue demo to get some hype. Which is great, assuming they can get people to notice it past the three dozen other demos and prologues that release on a daily basis on Steam. But that’s neither here nor there.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Among the Sleep lately, mostly how I never got far in it. Baby Blues Nightmares is a similar premise, in that you play as a toddler in a nightmare scenario. The demo is available now and will take you less than 20 minutes to complete provided you know what you’re doing. But I really recommend it because it is utterly spine-chilling. And I don’t say that about indie horror games much.

Baby Blues Nightmares answers the first question many people might have on viewing the concept; isn’t it unrealistic that a toddler would be going through a nightmare scenario and maintain their composure? Well, you don’t. Witnessing horrors in this game causes your cry meter to go down and if it goes down all the way, you start crying and enemies will find you regardless of if you are hiding. The sanity meter from Amnesia.

And much like Amnesia, there’s a way to fix that. Chocolate! You’ll find limited amounts of chocolate around the map and use those to stop crying. We’ll see how well the full game implements this once you’re meant to actively avoid it. It’s a bit hard to tell in the demo where the crying sequences are scripted and forced to happen.

The Steam page for Baby Blues says that you’ll use your imagination to outsmart lurking horrors. I don’t know what that means, because it wasn’t used in the demo. But it opens up a wealth of possibilities. You can also draw on the walls, because you are still a child. There’s a tricycle that the dev promises you’ll be able to customize and maintain. All this for a story about a toddler looking for their toys.

It’s damn adorable, and that’s part of what makes it so gut-wrenching. Check out the demo.