Dream

It's really not good, either. Dream is an exploration game that takes place in the subconscious mind of a young man. It's an interesting concept, but that's about it. When they say "exploration" they really mean "wandering around a big area where everything looks the same for AGES, while searching for something. And no, we're not gonna tell you what that is." Don't get me wrong, I like exploration games. I love open-world games and I'm pretty happy with sandbox games nowadays. But this is just ridiculous. I spent hours roaming around the first area, searching for something without knowing what it was- and I might add that the controls are really choppy and the world is filled with annoying hitboxes and invisible walls. When you stop admiring the craftsmanship of a video game and become more focused on how tedious a region is and wonder when you'll get to move on, the developers have crossed a line. This is supposed to be a young man whose waking hours are "tedious and dull," but whose dreams are "lucid and powerful." I did not get this impression at all. Howard has inherited his recently deceased uncle's entire property, all his money, and the rights to his famous books. It feels to me that he should have a ton of options right now and the resources and opportunities to figure out what he wants to do. Also, the voice actor for Howard was... Man, he was just really terrible, alright? There was NO emotion in his voice. No confliction, no confusion, nothing to suggest that he was going through some sort of psychological or worldly crisis. He is completely monotonous regardless of the situation. As all games do, Dream had its good points. The landscape feels vivid and real, the artistry and rendering are beautiful. Though the music was a big disappointment. In most atmospheric games nowadays, you usually get an inspiring and/or emotional soundtrack to complete the experience, and as it did in most cases, Dream seemed to lean more towards minimalist.

In Dream all you really do is visit various dreams and solving the few simple puzzles available there. The only difficulty arises from the levels being fairly empty and boring, with lots of paths taking you away from the puzzles you need to solve to complete each dream. Some dreams also have side dreams, leading to more confusion, since in both dreams you do nothing at all, for the most part. This game feels more like a design project forcefully strung together into one experience, since levels, or dreams, have nothing in common, nor have anything of note happening in them. After completing a dream you wake up to realize something about your house has changed. You can explore it, but that also leads nowhere in particular. You can instead go back to bed immediately and start a new dream. In fact, deciding to explore the house I was in having finished a dream, I discovered I couldn't get back to the bedroom. Reading a walkthrough I saw that what I needed to do was immediately get back to bed, meaning I had to exit the game and reload the latest checkpoint in order to continue. Finishing a few more dreams, I saw nothing new to explore, and decided to call it quits then and there, not wanting to explore all the levels again, searching for something to trigger the next event. Dream asks the player to explore every nook and cranny, yet punishes you for exploring. It's simply a series of simple puzzles hidden among a myriad of pointless objects and locations - a hunt for a needle in a haystack. But puzzles are so simple, there's no sense of accomplishment in solving them. Adding to the confusion is the fact that you can still enter dreams you solved before. There are collectibles - far too many of them, but they don't replace gameplay.

After an hour of playing the game I began to feel like I was actually getting somewhere, and this I think is the biggest problem with the game. It starts slow, with an empty house and doesn't give you any help to get started. Yes it is an exploration game but even then there has to be some kind of goal or aim. For a long time I felt directionless and wandered, almost stumbling through the game. Then after a while playing I began to feel like I was making progress. The game looks really nice, the music really is lovely and the concept and ideas behind it are really nice. I like what I have played, (a lot more than an hour now) and look forward to getting further. I did a short video showing the first 20 minutes of gameplay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ki-vBjEhl0o

This is a really hard game to recommend to many gamers. It has very little actual gameplay to speak and unless you are looking to collect everything, your inventory is pretty pointless. Instead the game promises to be a much more atmospheric experience, but any given dream will show you about what you are exploring within 30 minutes of arriving. Even the promise of things getting a little scary the first nightmare suggests quickly evaporates. Rather, if you are coming here, you are here to experience it all with Howard and see how he deals with it all. On that front it actually works well and you will sympathize with him. But there is little else here.