Should you keep blinking?

You’re stuck in a dream. Blink and change your surroundings to escape the shadows of your past.

Time To Wake Up is a first-person psychological thriller that has an interesting gameplay mechanic. Blink and your surroundings change entirely so a room could have a different layout or a barrier might disappear when you blink, allowing you to proceed. It’s a clever idea and one that works well within the game, though it’s on the short side at just a few hours long.

The story itself is decent and focuses on your character’s inner demons, the voice in his head that he’s been stuck with for a long time. The puzzles are pretty simple, but the blinking mechanic does make for some interesting changes to areas, some even have you need to keep blinking to switch wind directions to propel you forward through a long corridor, and blinking will change which way you go.

The game handles well and the framerate is consistent. It wasn’t when I first got code, it had some issues with audio as well, but a recent patch has fixed this. The visuals are fairly simple but have a nice look to them. The voice-acting is decent enough and the soundtrack is impressive overall.

The Verdict

Time To Wake Up has a nice gameplay mechanic that it might lean a little heavy on and it’s not the longest game, but it does well to provide a decent psychological thriller experience.

Score: 7.0