Time To Wake Up Review – Let It Go!

Time To Wake Up is a psychological thriller game by Eye Blink Twice, with a unique core gameplay premise that ties into some fun 3D platforming. Exploring themes of addiction and obsession, the game throws us into the deep end of these themes in Alan Malone’s apartment as he converses with a chatbot he created to be able to incessantly talk to the “author” of a book he’s been infatuated with since school. The walls of his dirty apartment are adorned with quotes from the book, the sink is piled high with empty pill bottles, the bills have been left unpaid, and he’s ignoring an invitation from his neighbour who’s just moved in down the hall, preferring to stay cooped up in his dingy apartment with his book.

A voice at the back of his mind urges him to throw the book away, to turn his life around, but to no avail. Until one night, when Alan goes to sleep and wakes up in a strange dream world, where he cannot speak, only listen to the voice in his head as it guides him through his demons.

Traversing through this world involves switching between the dreary present and a bright and colourful past as Alan’s struggles through childhood tie in with his demons in the present. Each time Alan blinks, he switches to the other time period and the environment around him changes. This starts with some basic removal of an obstacle in our path and slowly turns into some more challenging platforming segments where we must keep switching mid-jump to land on a surface in a different time period – even to the point where we’re not quite sure if there’s going to be anything there, but we see a gap so we need to take the risk.

While it was a bit mechanically awkward at times, and it was also quite easy to get turned around when the room orientation switches between blinks, I really enjoyed the platforming in Time To Wake Up. It was a fun idea for a mostly narrative game, and there were quite a few times where I was stumped on what I needed to do next, having to look around the room and see what was changing in between blinks and what I could utilize to progress. I do think Eye Blink Twice could have gone deeper into this mechanic and created a more fulfilling puzzle experience, but considering this is a mostly story-focused game, I think this was a good choice for implementing some interesting gameplay while experiencing the narrative – an aspect of narrative games that a lot of developers struggle to deliver on.

Unfortunately, the narrative is where Time To Wake Up fails to deliver. While the initial hunt for the book Alan is obsessed with was an interesting starting point, especially as it toils with the struggle of wanting to let go of an addiction but also constantly finding ways to reel yourself back in, the game drops into more rudimentary territory in its latter half. We go from crawling after the same book and Alan’s refusal to help himself, to chasing after a girl he fancied in school and dodging bullies… maybe just let it go, Alan?

But for me, the biggest impact on Time To Wake Up’s storyline is the voice in our head. While voices in our heads are never a positive thing, in this case the voice was so obnoxious and overbearing that I began to dislike my experience with Time To Wake Up immensely. The voice acting is very over the top; minor lines of dialogue are filled with over-exaggerated sighs and weighted emotion where some subtlety would have made much more sense. But much more irritating was the voice’s constant complaining as we work our way through the dream world. Almost every action results in a huff and puff from the voice, whining that we’re not doing exactly what it says and moving on. At one point, I stopped to take a quick drink and realized that when you leave the game idle for even a few seconds, the voice will repeatedly nag you to keep going. Around three hours later, when the credits rolled, I was utterly sick of being constantly belittled and mocked, and hearing the same repeated lines of dialogue every time I messed up with the platforming.

Time To Wake Up offers a thoughtful dive into the habits of addiction as it explores a unique obsession that the main character developed in childhood, which has taken over his life in adulthood. Its platforming mechanics offer a challenging break from the narrative-focused structure, but unfortunately the narrative falls off the deep end once the most interesting theme it focuses on comes to a conclusion, and, while voices in our head should be a concern, in this case it was nigh unbearable.

Jess reviewed Time To Wake Up on PC with a provided review code. This review is based on the version of the game available at the time of writing and our score will not be changed.