Pillow Fight: counting sheep to overcome the trials of sleep

I'm an insomniac: you know, one of those types that can't switch off once I'm lying in bed. My doctor told me that I just need to improve my sleep hygiene. Turn off devices before bed. Minimise distractions. Associate your bed with rest. It's a journey that the nightcapped pajama-clad character of Pillow Fight is also working on. We're introduced to them in their room, incredibly late at night, just about to get to bed. Except once the lights are off, Pillow Fight isn't just about ignoring the distractions of the insomniac: it's about defeating them in battle.

In slumberland, the player enters the core gameplay state of Pillow Fight: deck-building duels played with cards and coins. It's a little tricky to explain. Each duel is played in rounds. In a round, an array of coins is flipped, landing on black sheep or white sheep. At the end of each round, if there are more sheep of one kind, it adds to a scale meter. If it reaches the top, with more white sheep played than black, the player wins. If it reaches the bottom, with more black than white, game over.

There's many strategic aspects to Pillow Fight that flesh out the game: first, some of the coins adjust the properties of the sheep. Some coins are unknown and could reveal themselves to be white or black once the turn is ended. Others have properties in relation to their position: wolves and dice flip and destroy coins in one direction, bombs destroy all coins within the immediate radius, and branches double the scoring properties of coins in the direction they point.

Fortunately, players have plenty at their disposal to work the game in their favor. First, there's a limited number of times players can swap the position of coins. There's also cards that they use in each round to manipulate coins. Each card has a cooldown, meaning players can use it for the number of rounds of the cooldown. There's loads of cards, and whilst the game doesn't provide enough opportunities to exploit synergies, it does add good strategy.

Each of Pillow Fight's bosses nicely complements the theme of defeating insomnia: the Man of Light represents blue light from devices, Noise Boy the disruption of aural distractions, and Heat Boy overheating in bed. Each boss has a unique ability that adds to the challenge. For instance, Heat Boy only allows swaps to work horizontally, confining the player's options, and Time Kid has a random chance that swaps may not go in the intended direction!

As a roguelike, there's plenty of elements introduced in a round add a sense of progression and variety. Defeating each boss provides the player with an opportunity to select one of three new cards to the deck or an item that provides permanent abilities. These affect each of the game's mechanics, from the number and effects of swaps, the behavior of coins, and scoring. It gives Pillow Fight the feel of a seasoned roguelike, a mini-Slay the Spire.

But the difficulty of the game doesn't relent with these new abilities. As the bosses progress, the chance of a coin flipping black ticks slightly higher, making player intervention even more necessary to stay afloat. If even this becomes too easy, each run of the game has adjustable difficulty settings, increasing the number of black and hidden tokens and additional modifiers. Put simply, for a free game, Pillow Fight just keeps on giving, with surprises at every turn: mechanics, modifiers, and buffs thrown the player's way to make sure it keeps their well-earned attention.

Pillow Fight is the creation of Jon Topielski, a San Francisco based developer who creates tutorials on working with the Godot engine, which the game is made in. Topielski is an experienced developer, publishing a wide catalog of Godot games from 2020. As in Pillow Fight, his games are made in collaboration with other developers, creating a varied patchwork of styles and gameplay. Pillow Flight's sound and music were composed by voxelectrica and mafgar, and the 'silly legs' design and movement of the protagonist at the start of the game is reminiscent of Thwack, a game Topielski created with artist Alphons63 in 2022.

Pillow Fight can be played for free on itch.io.

Subscribe to Demo Disk for weekly email updates on the site's coverage of new and upcoming indie games.