I had my doubts about Sleep is Death when i first heard about it. A story telling tool? What do I even do with that?

However, after reading the torrent of Sleep is Death (SID) previews I preordered the game with no hesitation. Rohrer’s been leading journalists through some pretty intriguing play sessions. Yet with $10 already spent I still had my doubts. In my video games experience, Effort has never been conducive to participation.

My friends and I were enthralled by the promise of LittleBigPlanet’s level creation tools. I even entertained thoughts of the game ushering in a creative revolution. LBP did no such thing: who wants to sit down for hours or even days to create levels? SID‘s controller interface seemed similarly intimidating. At a minimum, players in control of the story will need to organize their character and environment sprites.

When the game was given out to pre-orders this past week, my friend downloaded it and played it almost immediately with his girlfriend. His call came as no surprise when I downloaded my copy the next day. He gave me 30 minutes before he would get home to prepare something. At that point I had only watched Rohrer’s tutorial video posted earlier in the day. This would definitely require some improvisation.

I’m going to name this first story we created Intrusion. The scene cast my friend as a woman in a green outfit. The 30 second time limit made for some hectically played scenes.

We switch places in our second story, Fort. You’ll notice that I’m a much less innovative player than my friend was in our first story.

Not exactly great storytelling, but we had fun in our own way. Still, though, I want to sit down and spend some time to craft an actual story to tell my friends through SID. It’s too bad I might never have enough time.