Dreams of Pain becomes reality on Steam

• Announcements by Jack Allin
• Published:

Indie developer announces next game after experimental first-person thriller released on Windows PC

SuloSounds sure doesn't waste any time. With the experimental thriller Dreams of Pain now released on PC, already the solo Finnish developer is hard at work on a new game, Keep the Lights On!

Visually inspired by the retro 3D games of the late 90s, the "highly experimental" Dreams of Pain sends players to the ominously named eponymous town, where you'll need to uncover a "mysterious and eerie story" by talking to the locals, interacting with items and solving puzzles along the way. To succeed you must "look for unnatural patterns and oddities in the world ... listen carefully and inspect everything." That is true of many adventures, but this one is meant to pose a serious challenge, with some unique obstacles to overcome that make it "extremely unlikely" you'll be able to finish without help. Even the story is told in a "very unconventional way," incorporating ARG-like elements into a narrative that's projected to take between 3-5 hours to complete.

A little less retro and far more conventional is SuloSounds' next game, a "linear story-driven first-person horror experience." Keep the Lights On! is another free-roaming first-person adventure, this time set in "an idyllic small cabin in the cold deep woods of Finland." You've won a free weekend here in a contest, but it soon becomes clear that this will be no vacation getaway. While no further story details have yet been revealed, as you explore, the "gameplay elements such as slow movement and narrow field of view strengthen the unsettling feel" that something here is very, very wrong.

Dreams of Pain is available now on Steam for Windows PC, while Keep the Lights On! is ready for wishlisting and expected sometime in 2023.

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