I credit Proteus as a huge influence on many of the playful walking simulators I do so adore (the chattiness of some comes from Dear Esther, I reckon), so I’ve been keen to see what creator Ed Key was up to next. “An experimental russian-fairytale storytelling game” named The Forest of Sleep is the answer. That’s about all we know for now, though that little is splendid. He’s making it with folks including Nicolai Troshinsky, whose charming art can be seen in a little animation below.

A full version of that top screenshot is over here, and here’s an animation:



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So probably not another walking simulator, then. The Forest of Sleep looks gorgeous, somewhere between an old picture book and the old story cartoons on Channel 4 that Young Alice disliked for being sinister and lacking explosions but Crone Alice misses.

I’m keen to see what it turns up from Slavic folklore too. The Witcher 3 laps at that source and does wonderful things with it. I feel I should mention The Hairpin’s Ask Baba Yaga somewhere here because, while barely relevant, it is great. Okay, cool.

A formal announcement with more details and all that are due on Monday.

[Disclosure: I’m pals with Ed Key, and several other contributors to The Forest of Sleep. Ed and I swam beneath a waterfall in Yorkshire on a rainy May day, much to the amusement of passing ramblers wrapped up in their Gore-Tex and cagoules. I would like to see the photos I spotted them taking from the path above.]