They Don’t Sleep is a management game centered around surviving waves of zombies through day-night cycles until you repair a vehicle to flee to safety, all while you have to gather supplies and watch over not only yourself, but you infant son. They Don’t Sleep finds a great balance between giving you space to watch over your health stats and making you feel like the world is closing in on you. The addition of a roguelike leveling system makes each attempt feel worth giving your all, since the next loop will be easier.

Managing your supplies and status bars requires you to constantly be thinking on your feet and setting priorities on what can wait. Staying in the house to replenish a need such as hunger or rest will leave your fences at risk, which will cause a reset in the loop when a fence hits 0% health. If you stay outside to fend off zombies too long, you or your son will have their needs be at greater risk, especially your son since he needs to constantly be fed and have his diaper changed. Do either of these too long, you will run out of supplies, which will require you to run out to scavenge resources. They Don’t Sleep perfects this constant struggle of self care and risk, you need to scavenge to get parts for your vehicle to reach endgame, but you can’t just sprint to the end, there is a sort of grind and waiting game to the process which does not grow stale on multiple loops. Narratively the rogue like elements are unique, the main character has no idea why the loops occur, but she will remember each loop to further improve. Having the loop be a random glitch in the universe is refreshing, leaving some elements unexplained is something many titles of today sorely lack.

Graphically the game is your standard indie pixel look, everything looks how it should which all that really matters, there is no questioning what piece of furniture you are looking at. Sonically the game is also standard, no real complaints in this department. Movement feels good, especially when you get your fitness upgraded to max level.

A very welcoming aspect of the game is that the leveling system is actually bulletproof; there are no perks that are useless. Some will definitely be more useful to upgrade earlier than other such as fitness and parenting, but what happens is that the less useful perks in the beginning become vital to surviving late game such as cooking and stress management. Too often we see perks and leveling have some branches that you can 100% skip, but They Don’t Sleep strives for quality over quantity.

The new game+ section provides a tweak to the original formula that provides a new set of challenges, such as the fence number being lower, the vehicle needing more parts, and the space for zombies to travel is shorter. The levels earned beforehand make this manageable but still make it challenging enough to play. Being able to add modifiers to the game to offer a new challenge is something I normally do not do in roguelikes unless it is required, but in this instance it works well.

They Don’t Sleep is a prime example of why I sift through a ton of indie games to find the diamonds in the rough. Digging through unity asset flips to find games such as this is what makes sitting through mid worth it. I would highly recommend They Don’t Sleep.