23: The man who would not sleep—dares not sleep—takes drugs to keep himself awake. Finally falls asleep—and something happens. Motto from Baudelaire p. 214. [Hypnos](Anyone know what the Baudelaire motto is referring to, btw?)You play as a man whose dreams have taken a sinister turn. The untold horrors, shifting demonic forms, twisted landscapes, and sinister entities that greet you when you close your eyes have become so concrete and frightening that as a defense mechanism you have stopped sleeping. All was well the first night of your experiment as you led your life as usual. But several days have passed, and you are beginning to reach your mental and physical limits. Every pill you take brings you relief, but you know that your body is building a resistance to the drug -- eventually not even that can keep you from the horrors in your dreams, horrors you still imagine each time your weary eyelids start to fall.
So, the basic idea is that you have a certain amount of tasks to perform in the waking world. However, your mind is starting to go insane after not sleeping for several days. You have an essentially unlimited set of pills which give you a boost of energy, but whose effects diminish each time you take them. Since your character is afraid to fall asleep, he will automatically take one if he gets too tired. As you get tired, your sanity decreases to the point where you start to see horrible visions and your interactions with others are negatively affected unless you take a pill early, which essentially shortens the time left until the pills stop working. Each task has some incentive (story, points, insight into dreamworld perhaps), and affects your sleep level depending on the monotony. There might also be an endgame in the dreamworld, affected by your previous actions.
I don't have a concrete story worked out yet, and probably won't be able to work on this until early/mid November. I'm thinking of learning Inform to make it easier. A real-time game might work better, although I am not at all confident in my abilities to make sound/art work in a graphical game.
Edit: Probably abandoned/shelved due to waaay too much work this month.
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