This morning I got up at 4:30, took my dog for a walk, chugged some coffee as I packed a duffel bag, and was on the road to a family reunion by 5:30. Needing to drive when you’re sleepy in the morning isn’t as bad as needing to drive when you’re sleepy at night (in one case you’re slowly waking up, and in the other you’re slowly falling asleep), but neither is ideal. When I have to make a tired trek, I employ a bunch of strategies to stay alert. When I got my Red Bull this morning, it felt like getting a power-up that would help me make it through the rest of the day.
Introducing Driving While Sleepy Simulator
Obviously, in the real world, once you reach a certain threshold of exhaustion, the safe, smart thing to do is pull over and find somewhere to sleep. But in the video game this situation prompted me to imagine, you power through your depleted stamina bar for glory.
In the past decade, we’ve seen simulators dedicated to the most mundane activities. Though farming games likeHarvest Moonwere popular when I was growing up in the early ’00s, the more hardcoreFarming Simulatorhas grown a sizable audience since the first game launched in 2008.
In the wake of that series, there have been all manner of simulations of even more boring activities.Lawn Mower Simulator,PowerWash Simulator, and variousTruck Simulatorshave invited players to get really good at virtual renderings of menial tasks. And staying awake while driving on little sleep is a mundane, but challenging, activity — not unlike clearing every miniscule piece of grime off a muck-covered truck or finding the last remaining unmowed blades of grass in a ten-acre yard.
In Driving While Sleepy Simulator, it would be fairly easy to stay awake when you first set out on your journey. But the longer the drive drags on, the more extreme the measures you would need to take to keep your eyes open. At first, a light slap to your cheek might be enough to wake you up. But over time, the need for sleep becomes increasingly hard to resist.
There could be cosmetic changes to your character as the drive progresses, as well. You could begin with wide eyes, and then over time, don an Ebenezer Scrooge sleeping cap, and eventually a saw would appear over your head and start working away at some lumber.
Alan Wake Up, You’re Going Off The Road!
You would begin with an inventory filled with stimulants. A thermos of coffee. A Red Bull. Five-Hour Energies. If the game is M-rated, perhaps a self-administered espresso enema. This arsenal of uppers might seem like enough to keep even Grandpa Pickles awake, but you’re underestimating just how sleepy your character can get.
There would also be sleep-delaying actions you could take, with varying degrees of efficacy. You could put your wheel on the rumble strip. You could roll down the window, and let the noise of the cold wind wake you up. You could play a metal album cranked to 11. You could apply a pinch to the tender skin under your arm. Each of these actions could gain you a bar or two of wakefulness in your quickly draining energy meter.
Maybe there could also be a limited number of opportunities to pull over and sleep. You might think that would make the game too easy, but the rest areas would be right next to construction zones or blue whale karaoke competitions, so you could only get fitful sleep that won’t provide much energy.
Of course, if you failed, your car would explode in a burst of bright orange fire. But joke’s on the fire: now you’reveryawake.
