Interview: Sleep Tight Is Twin Stick Shooter Monster Madness

What Is Sleep Tight?

First off, what prompted you guys to tackle game development? Did you just get together and discuss the idea of Sleep Tight or…?

Maxx Burman, Creative Director @ We Are Fuzzy: We've always loved games! As kids, Jed and I always wanted to make games, and we both were very focused on learning the skill sets to make that a reality. In school, Jed studied programming and I went into art, but it wasn't until many years later, when both of us were deep into our careers, that we decided to fulfill this childhood dream.

The idea for the gameplay came out of a prototype that Jed made in college. At the time, he sent me what was admittedly a really horrible looking game, but which had a very addictive gameplay loop. It was something that we always wanted to take all the way, and never forgot about. 6 years later, I started doing some artwork for the game, coming up with what you see today, and sending over designs. That re-ignited the flame, and we both went full force into creating Sleep Tight.

Now, this is a combination of defense strategy and twin-stick shooter. Walk us through the general game structure and how it works.

Sleep Tight works in two phases. Daytime is the phase where you can build pillow forts, research new upgrades, unlock new weapons etc. You have as much time here as you need, but a set amount of SUNS that you can spend. Think of SUNS like "the amount of moves you can make".

Once you've spent all your suns, the Night phase begins. Each Night phase is a 1-minute long round, where monster hordes invade from every corner of your bedroom, and you need to use your twin stick shooting skills to survive until dawn. As you kill monsters they drop STARS which you can use to purchase new upgrades during the day.

Ultimately, the goal is to see how many Nights you can survive. There are infinite mix and match strategies for players to try, and you'll have to push yourself to master many different play styles in order to unlock the full neighborhood of kids.

Defense and Characters

What kind of defensive tools are available for purchase? We understand you can use couches and homemade turrets?

There several different tiers of walls and turrets you can build, ranging from the simple semi-auto turret, all the way to heat-seeking rocket turrets. As you research higher tier defenses, you can upgrade your existing fort to ensure it's ready for the bigger and harder monsters that attack in the later rounds.

Besides the variety of defenses to build, you can also unlock passive upgrades for them, like damage boosts to turrets, HP boosts to walls, or even electrifying walls to deal damage to monsters who attack them.

Everything in the game is meant to feel like a child's imagination run wild, designed to look like you've raided the linen closet, or dismantled your RC Car, all in the name of survival.

Tell us about the characters that are included in the game, and the best one you'd recommend for beginners.

There's 12 playable characters in the game, all with a very distinct personality. We wanted to make a game for the kid in all of us, so it was important that there was a character for everyone in the game.

Each character has a difficulty attached to them, so for beginners, Joe or Brooke will be your best bet. As you get more familiar with the mechanics, and can complete challenges, you'll unlock more difficult characters that lend themselves to specific play styles, like Rosie, who builds the strongest walls, and turrets that can fire further, or Dexter, who gets discounted powerups, and boosted Synergy.

Is It Solo Only?

Does the game feature any sort of co-op support or it is a solo affair?

Maxx Burman, Creative Director @ We Are Fuzzy: We're launching with single player, and we're currently focused on making the best single player experience we can. That said, we're having a lot of fun building in Mixer interactions to create more of a community experience, and really let streamer audiences get involved in the success or demise of a run.

How has the feedback been thus far on the game? Are people excited for it?

The feedback has been incredible. Gamers seem to really connect with what we're trying to make, and the support from the gaming community has been amazing. Sleep Tight has been so close to our team's hearts for so long, watching people play and get hooked on the game is a great feeling.

How thrilled are you to be part of the Nintendo Switch line-up?

We love the Switch! Sleep Tight is meant to be a very easy pick-up-and-play type of game, and the Nintendo Switch is a great fit for that. We're thrilled to be a part of the lineup, and the team at Nintendo has been so supportive at every step of the journey.

The E3 Experience

Tell us about this E3 experience you have coming up and who can take part?

Banks Boutté, Co-Founder @ We Are Fuzzy: We are incredibly excited for our activation at E3! Imagine if Pixar made American Gladiators into an escape room! We've built the set of Sleep Tight in real life equipped with pillow forts, toy guns and fully fabricated monster and game character costumes. Select members of the press and games influencers will take to the arena to build pillow forts and unlock dart gun upgrades to fight the monsters that come out of the shadows each night. The whole experience will also be live-streamed to Twitch!

Finally, what's next for We Are Fuzzy? Or is it too soon to tell yet?

We've built an amazing team at We Are Fuzzy. Right now, we're focused on a smooth and successful launch for Sleep Tight on July 26th, and are looking forward to sitting down with everyone afterward to ask "what do we want to do next".

Sleep Tight releases on July 26 for PC and Nintendo Switch.