Melatonin isn't just a sleep aid, it's a rhythm game that tells the story of a pink-hoodie-wearing person's everyday life. Players take over their body during their dreams and play through five different mini-games. Once they get through the mini-games for a certain night, players have to prove their mastery by performing all five patterns before moving on to the next night where the cycle continues.
This is the first real game by indie developer Half Asleep, though it seems it's currently working on its next one, Block Party. Melatonin is a simple game with a good soundtrack. As long as fans have a decent sense of rhythm, it's good for killing a few hours.
Melatonin has some amazing original lo-fi beats that players unlock as they get better at the game. Unlike Guitar Hero, which plays the same song regardless of how players perform, Melatonin's original music changes to correspond to the level of difficulty. All the gameplay revolves around hitting the spacebar or the directional keys with the right timing, and when the prompts get more complicated and speed up, the music speeds up and the beats change as well. There are also portions when the time slows way down, which seems easy but actually does a good job of throwing off the sense of rhythm.
The level progression is similar to Mario, with different dreams (worlds) each night with multiple stages to get through. While it's a casual game, don't expect it to be easy. The gameplay is simple, but players have to be precise with their timing in order to land perfects. They have to rely entirely on the audio and visual cues for when to hit the buttons, as the game hides the reticle when not in a tutorial. It's clear that the developers want people to know the songs and understand how to count time. It's honestly a helpful game for training rhythm and counting time, getting players used to distinguishing upbeats and downbeats.
Learning the songs until getting good enough to consistently land perfects is rewarding. But after a while, the repetitive nature of the games can wear down a person. Half Asleep does a good job switching up the pace and the visuals, but there's only so much the devs could do to keep rhythmically pressing the spacebar fun. Sometimes they try to catch the player off guard with a left or right on the d-pad, but that's the height of mix-ups.
What Melatonin does well revolves around its music, and the songs are good. The catchy bops blend pop and electro and have a good deal of repetition in order to help the player catch the beat. The visuals are also great, even though everything is a washed-out shade of pastel pink. The cartoon style works for the dreamy themes, such as when the character dreams about food and the mini-game shows him flying around on a chair eating pizza and doughnuts. There's also a fun level where players have to time the character's jumps from one giant cell phone to the next while dreaming about 'followers.'
However, once players get through those 20 levels (which won't take long) there's really nothing to do except try for a perfect run. For that reason it's decently replayable, but for not long after that. Besides becoming repetitive with its gameplay, Melatonin runs into a problem with its audience and its skill level. For a supposedly casual game with a dreamlike theme, it requires laser focus to time everything correctly.
Melatonin is a series of quick-time events set to music and that's not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, there are times when Melatonin really captures the dreamlike spirit of goofiness and the music swells at just the right moment to produce goosebumps. However, not all the mini-games are good. Some are clunky, like a game where players have to watch the character's arms instead of the gun because they can't see the reticle, or one when they have to mimic a weightlifter that isn't all that exciting.
Melatonin works smoothly without any bugs and the controls feel crisp. The visuals are dreamlike, and the color palette is conducive to making people sleepy. With all the music to discover, it's kind of like an interactive album. Towards the end, it felt like just automatically pressing the space bar to the beat from level to level wanting to hear the next song.
Melatonin is available to play on Nintendo Switch and PC. Game Rant reviewed the PC version.