ALARM! is a simple game with a simple premise: you play a God-like being (some may even call him Mr. Sandman) whose job it is to make sure people set their alarms and wake up in the morning ON TIME! Sounds easy and it is at first: you start out just watching over one person to get a feel of what you need to do and how you need to do it. There's no time restriction in this first stage, just a few clicks and hey presto! You know how to play the game.

What gives ALARM! its addictiveness and allure is how you progress. Each stage sees another person added to the mix, another alarm to set and to make sure they wake up on time. This alone is enough to get quite difficult over time, but to make it even more interesting is the fact that some of these people may get up and decide they want to turn off their alarm, some may sleep through it, while others may blatantly ignore it. How you deal with these people is up to you: you can interact with the environment they sleep in. Person ignoring their alarm? Throw a book at them and watch them wake dazed and confused. Someone accidentally sleeping through? Adjust the volume on their alarm until they wake up. Some may only to respond to specific alarms and it is up to you to find the correct one to wake them up.

Your screen will be divided into a maximum of twenty four people on screen at one time and it is up to you to spot the lazy or unresponsive ones by flicking between them regularly. These will be identifiable one of several ways, one being that if a person has turned off their alarm, it will glow a faint orange, a person in a deep sleep will have large Z's above their heads whilst the alarm goes off and a person who turns off their alarm after it goes off will have a grumpy face above their head. Later levels will see time zones introduced as well as people requiring to woken up at varying times. It's hard work being Mr. Sandman.

Image Attribution: Sims alarm clock retrieved (13 August 2015) from http://thumbs2.modthesims2.com/img/1/6/2/0/1/4/MTS_mrzeon-121971-snapshot_00000001_f0235d3b.jpg