GO TO BED by JoeTheItchPro reaction . . . | . . .
—
Content Warning:
Non-spoilers:
break-in
Kidnapping
—
Hello all! Recently I have played the game GO TO BED by JoeTheItchPro on itch.io! Below are my thoughts on the game, adapted from my itch.io comment. I had a fun time playing it, so I'd reccomend it! It's a short game too, since it was made for a game jam.
(Spoilers for the game below)
DUDE omg the reveal that we were under subject b’s house was awesome!!! I was struck and awed when I saw the underneath of the trapdoor!
Also lol the dead body that disappeared when we collected the key. Headcanoning that that was some supernatural phenomenon completely unrelated to sb. They just go about kidnapping people and are occasionally affected by the paranormal. An entit(ies) which doesn’t really do much (maybe appear in the corner of your eye, or move objects), so they just get so so confused sometimes and. Scared. And they never realise it’s anything supernatural. Funny to me <3.
Anyway man I was so scared during that entire 3rd scenario ToT. I had to resort to loudly speaking about how scared I was and how I was about to get jumpscared. Makes me less scared than if I’m quiet. The power of complaining <3. Even the “Is the house secure? Are you sure?” at the end of the second segment unnerved me.
The way s2 ended also made me think that we didn't necessarily succeed in guarding the house, despite fading to black without any jumpscares. It never said you succeeded like it did in s1, after all. So I thought there'd be another section later where we're either sb again, or another subject, and that's when we'll see if we succeeded or not. Either by being jumpscared if we're sb (if we failed ofc), or finding out sb was murdered (or seeing their remains) if we were another subject. A delayed answer.
Given the naming scheme of the 'levels' (situation 1 - subject a, etc), I thought these people were unknowingly being researched and experimented on. So when "GO TO BED" was flashing on-screen at the start of s3, I was like "Dude 😭. You can't just tell sc to go to bed, or expect them to go through the whole rigmarole of securing their space 😭.
They are not securing their space to prevent intruders from getting in, they have been taken to the intruder's space (or let's be real, kidnapped by the researchers). There's nothing they could do to make this space safe for them, it's inherently unsafe.
These researchers are so victim-blame-y 😭. 'Ohh go to bed, secure the house, make sure no one can get in! 😊'. THEY'RE IN THEIR KIDNAPPER'S HOUSE! Rip all the subjects </3."
That's not what was happening of course, but I thought it was interesting so I wanted to share :). I really like how it actually went, though. The reveal that we were kidnapped by the previous subject was so cool! :)
Brb let me replay GTB to see what else could’ve happened.
Okay in retrospect it’s really smart to have the first section go through a sequential order of someone’s attempts to break in, so we the player know what things do what, and how they can help us get out. Like, I wouldn’t have considered using the knives to disarm the security system otherwise, because I haven’t encountered one before, and so didn’t think knives would do anything to them.
I wasn’t even sure what the armed security system did here. I was like “Armed? Is it gonna. Shoot the trespasser? That doesn’t seem right…”.
Also, that window in s1 unnerved me the first time I saw it. I kept thinking I'd see the intruder outside.
That whole sequence was also really satisfying to me. I kept failing steps before moving on and getting it right in the next run, just see how the sequence would end this time.
Y'know, I half-expected that we wouldn’t be able to escape no matter what we did, so I’m glad we were able to get out :).
I like how the game looks! I'm not familiar with making games, so this is just guessing, but it seems to me that there's a more 'high-def' visual underneath, and then a filter on top of that to make it all pixel-ly.
Overall, I really liked GO TO BED. It's a neat little game, so definitely check it out yourself if you have the chance! :)