That Which Sleeps was a Dark Fantasy Cosmic Horror Turn-Based Strategy game under development by two-person indie studio King Dinosaur Games.
The player takes on the role of an "Ancient Evil" (selected from an array of eldritch "Old Ones", demonic "Primal Entities", and even formerly mortal heroes turned villainous gods) who was sealed away in the distant past and has recently begun to awaken in a world that has long forgotten them. While the Ancient Evil is gathering its strength, it must manipulate the world from the shadows by recruiting a cult of loyal Agents to corrupt countries, spread terror and chaos, and undertake rituals to ensure conditions are ideal for its return, all while various heroes scramble to figure out what is happening and turn the tide. The player must balance aggression with caution, as causing too much disruption to the world will draw the heroes' attention to Agents and clues about the Ancient Evil's identity and weakness. When the Ancient Evil fully awakens, then its existence becomes known to the Chosen One, a unique hero ordained by Fate to defeat it and a major threat to the player's strategy. Victory is achieved once the entire world has fallen to the Ancient Evil's influence.
The game's Kickstarter campaign
was fully funded in October 2014. According to the developer, work on the game's proprietary engine and gameplay systems was mostly completed before the campaign and the largest remaining hurdle for release was hiring an artist to create quality art assets to replace the placeholder ones. Unfortunately, the project appears to have been abandoned, as the developer's last progress message was posted in November 2017 and the game's Steam page has been removed.
A fan of That Which Sleeps was inspired to produce his own version of the game: Shadows Of Forbidden Gods, which released in July 2023.
The game provides examples of:
- Angels, Devils and Squid: The five Middle Planes include two types of hell (the Wyld, a chaotic realm of change and mutation, and the Abyssal Crag, ruled by demons defined by their ambitions), and two types of Heaven (the Valhalla-like Halls of Glory and Olympus-based Eternal Mount). The "squid" are the Outsiders, who traveled across the Void from elsewhere, and the Old Ones, none of whom are associated with any of the Middle Planes save Limos, who created them.
- Animal Eye Spy: Belial can infest a place with ravens to spy on it.
- Apocalypse How: The goal is Planetary, with the level of destruction ranging from Societal Collapse to Total Extinction depending on the Old One in question.
- Breaking Speech: Sisyphus' main power, along with his Deadly Upgrades, is interacting with the Chosen One, especially in the form of taunts built from phrases that home in on whatever it is will hurt the Chosen One most.
- The Corrupter: Highly encouraged; a corrupt hero is a Sleeper Agent that can be activated at any time if you need a spare true Agent.
- The Chosen One: Your main antagonist, as the forces of Fate try to stop you from destroying or utterly reshaping the world.
- The Dragon: The Prophet, your first Agent, who has unique powers based on who you're playing as.
- The End of the World as We Know It: Every Old One will bring this about, to a greater or lesser extent, in victory.
- Eldritch Abomination: Basically all of the Old Ones have at least some shades of this, but Azlan, who exists in the Dreamlands, causes insanity, and whose awakening is an Instant-Win Condition, is the most clearly Lovecraftian.
- Even Evil Has Standards: Since the player is the ultimate Big Bad of the setting, there's plenty of other evils who will react to them this way.
- Agents will eventually abandon Limos when they realize he plans to destroy the world utterly, unless they have been turned into vampires and thus had their free will compromised.
- The demons of the Abyssal Crag will refuse to work with Old Ones whose goals are too destructive — again, Limos being the most obvious example.
- Evil Is Deathly Cold: Inatha, who seeks to freeze the world over.
- Evil Versus Oblivion: A Chosen One doesn't have to be good-aligned. Fate would sooner empower a mortal tyrant or psychopath than let the Old One's schemes succeed. They can even be more dangerous to the Old One than a heroic foe because of how willing they are to Shoot the Dog.
- Fallen Hero: You can create them. If you're especially quick and successful, you can even corrupt the Chosen One.
- Forever War: Endless simulation can end up looking like one, since your defeat will only mean getting sealed, and that may last very little. Of course, several options will end the game, such as causing the complete extermination of all life, or even destroying forever the world.
- God King: The Elven Emperor is an elf so ancient and powerful he's considered a rival Old One in his own right.
- Godzilla Threshold: The Desperation mechanic: as the Old One gets more powerful and dangerous, ordinarily moral foes rapidly become more willing to commit atrocities to stop them.
- Hero Antagonist: The Chosen One will typically fall under this, though it's not strictly necessary. In fact, most of the Old One's opponents will qualify to a certain extent.
- Humanoid Abomination: Sisyphus, who was once human himself.
- Hungry Jungle: Moloch is the Fetid Primeval, seeking to bring about an uncivilized world of rampant growth that he can feed on at will.
- Instant-Win Condition: If Azlan awakens, it's over for the world, even if The Chosen One and a massive army is just about to enter the seal. And should Limos awaken, the world will be a simple ritual away from complete extermination.
- Light Is Not Good: One of the Old Ones, Seraph, has powers focusing around crystals and light. She's just as dangerous as any of her kin.
- Manipulative Bastard: Manipulating the weak, cowardly and decadent is a core trait of Belial, along with the power to twist and contort fate. Still, every Old One, even Karth, will have to engage in some of this to keep the peoples of the world in the dark and at each other's throats until it's too late.
- Orcus on His Throne: Played straight with some of the Old Ones, initially forced to stay on the seal, and later being much more safer in that particular area. Justified, since your don't want to draw the kind of attention you can generate, plus the seal region is especially dangerous, and most heroes won't last long nosing around in search of loot.
- Our Orcs Are Different: Almost purely the bloodthirsty, irredeemably Ax-Crazy model, created by Karth to wage war and destroy. That said, The Chosen One can be an orc, which can complicate matters. Also, orcs can ally with humans and abandon the Shadow, though they can't become more civilized than a tribal government.
- Pieces of God: Every living creature is made from Limos' essence, and a part of him. Unfortunately, Limos would very much like to be whole again.
- Planetary Parasite: Moloch, who would much prefer to be rid of the pesky civilizations that might interrupt his feast (curiously, he's more a symbiote to most nonsentient life, his powers encourage growth).
- Plot Armor: A game mechanic for The Chosen One. Until the Old One gets directly involved, they're guaranteed to survive (often barely) quest failures that should have killed them if survival is a possible outcome. (If survival isn't possibly, though, they'll just get an unusually ignominious death.)
- Power at a Price: Sisyphus' Agents grow very powerful very quickly, but this costs them in health, as his power doesn't come without sacrifice.
- Quirky Miniboss Squad: Agents, the Old One's lieutenants and direct minions.
- Screw Destiny: Fate is working against the Old One every step of the way.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The Old One, whose starting location is even called just "the Seal".
- The Smurfette Principle: Among the Old Ones, only Seraph identifies as female, though this isn't something you'd be able to tell looking at her.
- Suicidal Cosmic Temper Tantrum: All the Old Ones invariably bring destruction, but usually as a side-effect of their goals. Limos, the creator of the world, now wants every living thing in creation to just die, and even tolerates the undead only barely and temporarily.
- Superior Species:
- Most Elder Races, like dwarves and elves, are just plain better than humans and other lesser races (e.g. gnomes), and harder to corrupt to boot. The Minotaurs, another Elder Race, are a complication to this, being short-lived and enslaved, but even they have powers no human could hope to match if they're allowed to reach their potential. And yes, the Chosen One can be one of the Elder Races — this is a bad thing.
- In Procedural Generation mode, Elder Races are created with fully-developed cultures ex nihilo, while humans are still mostly tribal. On the other hand, they're also extremely stagnant, without the dynamic development humans are capable of.
- Stone Wall: Inatha, the Gathering Storm, has an extremely good defensive position if it fortifies itself in snowy mountains. Its main playstyle will be slowly destroying the resources needed by the civilizations, but it can also take advantage of that defensive strength to employ an aggressive, high-speed strategy and quickly cover the world in tundra because it's better than most Old Ones at withstanding the Chosen One and the Alliance.
- Villain Protagonist: The Old One, naturally.
- Villains Act, Heroes React: The game's dynamic plot will be almost entirely set in motion by, and shaped by, the Old One's actions. Hell, Destiny itself is implied to work like this, only acting to find The Chosen One as a reaction to an Old One already stirring.
- You better ensure this trope is in effect, since even if you don't do anything, heroes will eventually act, with the key difference of the combined force of the alliance and The Chosen One being too much for you, ensuring your defeat.
- War God: Karth, the quickest-waking Old One, is a primal god of warfare. He's also the weakest power-wise, but he usually wakes so quickly the nations don't realize he's awake until long after he's out and about.
- Well-Intentioned Extremist: While other Old Ones are utterly alien, Sisyphus dreams of building a utopia. As one might guess from his name, even if he wins the game, his attempts to build a better world are doomed.
- Winds of Destiny, Change!: This is Belial's defining ability.
