Exhausted Man Review (PS5) | Push Square

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As an adult, being tired is an aspect of everyday life. Everyone has something sapping their energy. Whether it's work, school, or any other circumstance, we’re all just pushing ourselves until we can go to sleep again. That being said, it’s a bit of a surprise to see a full game focused on that subject.

Exhausted Man is about a game developer who has to meet various milestones on the game he's making before he can go to sleep. In fact, he's so tired that he can't properly stand up. You must slither him around his room like a snake, meeting the various objectives set out before you. You do still have use of your hands and feet, but they're merely used for grabbing and pushing objects, and can sometimes be more of a hindrance than a useful tool.

If this sounds like a very simple premise, that's because it is. The entire game is essentially a continuous re-run of adding new items to your room to get in your way and then moving items by sliding around the place, like the Grinch in the animated version of How the Grinch Stole Christmas.

Unfortunately, the gameplay never really becomes compelling in an interesting way. Yeah, you can use items as steps to get to higher areas, and you can slide up walls, but nothing really feels right. We continually had issues with the exhausted man moving in ways that were opposite of what we told him to do. The camera and movement feel like they're combatting each other a lot.

While the gameplay is a snoozefest, we did find the art style to be very appealing. Everything seems to be made out of clay, and it looks really good for how simple the models are. Like stop-motion animated films, though, the frame rate is much smoother here.

Exhausted Man is not really a game that'll wake you up at all. It begins feeling very samey fast and, outside of planning where to place items before a level each time, there's not much of a strategy to be had. While it has a unique play style, there are plenty of other everyday-life indie games we think