NeverAwake (Xbox Series S/X) review

Don’t sleep on NeverAwake, which provides an engaging, unexpectedly adaptable twin-stick shooting journey through a young girl’s psyche.

NeverAwake is a twin-stick shooter set in a world of surrealistic dreams. Visually, the game is distinctive, with sizable sprites and bosses that habitually fill the screen. Each of the game’s 80 stages positions you inside the subconscious of a young girl, who is trapped in a deep state of sleep. Here, you’ll survey an inventory of fears that range from bland tasting vegetables, monstrous dogs, to the tormenting tools of dentistry.

Pleasingly, the game’s mechanics are every bit as unique as its aesthetics. The goal of most levels isn’t necessarily obtaining a high score or defeating every last on-screen foe. Instead, you’re typically tasked with collecting enough souls to complete a stage, which are dropped by defeated enemies. And if you don’t accomplish the first time you venture through each auto-scrolling stage, you’ll repeat the level, facing slightly tougher opposition.

Anxiety Succumbs to a Scattergun

Each world has three different boss fights. These generally operate the same way; by accumulating enough souls you will emerge victorious. Occasionally, you confront stages with a giant floating crystal. This object can shield you from adversaries, but you’ll need to pepper it with projectiles to get it to release enough souls to clear the zone.

But NeverAwake’s partiality for item collection isn’t the game’s only characteristic feature. As you progress, lead character Rem unlocks new secondary weapons and accessories. The former are elevated armaments that range from firework-like bursts that radiate around the young girl, a procession of hard-hitting rapid-fire shots, and even a shotgun-like tool. As you play, the game persistently reminds you that new upgrades that can be purchased, augmenting the output of each gun.

Lipstick is an Essential Accessory

Further customization is found in the accessories suite, with NeverAwake posing some of the inventory management dilemmas of a role-playing game. Here, you can outfit Rem with a shield ring that allows her to withstand more hits, earmuffs that magnetically attract souls, or lipsticks that recharge your special weapons. What’s interesting is the amount of customization here. Depending on your play style, you might want to boost your secondary by collecting souls, having it gradually refill over time, or regenerate by taking damage.

Of course, there are a multitude of other perks that can be purchased with your supply of souls. Other items allow Rem to use here weapon while dashing. Here, the combination of i-frames and your gunfire can help you evade a wave of boss-issued bullets, while an Invisible Coat grants invincibility after taking damage. Or perhaps, you’d prefer to outfit Rem with a backpack that increased the number of souls dropped by opponents, speeding up the pace of already fast-moving stages. But since each tool takes up a different amount of space in your restrained inventory, you’ll confront some tricky dilemmas.

Single-Stick Shooter?

But that’s not the extent of NeverAwake’s flexibility. If twin-stick shooting is too much for you, you can have Rem fire at targets automatically, so you can concentrate on dodging. If a stage is too much of a challenge, you can spend a few souls for a one-time firepower upgrade called “oversoul”. While the game’s campaign is mostly linear, there’s a wealth of assists and upgrades to ensure you don’t reach an impasse.

When it comes to performance, NeverAwake is fantastic. On the Series X, the game offers 4K/120fps performance without waver. Sure, the hardware isn’t pushing around too much geometry. But in execution, the game employs a filter to provide a dreamlike visual aesthetic, so you’ll barely notice any seams in Rem’s character model.

Conclusion

NeverAwake’s only real blemish is the game’s rather ambiguous exposition. As you progress, you’ll unlock additional diary entries, which touch on topics like isolation, depression, and grief. But these paragraph-long writings are concise and provided in an unclear order. Still, if you favor action over storytelling, NeverAwake’s accommodating approach can’t be faulted.

NeverAwake was played on Xbox Series X
with review code provided by the publisher.