Dreams of Another - Review

When Dreams of Another was announced, I was impressed at the visual style they went with, but then I was intrigued by the idea of shooting things to make things. Now that I have experienced the game, it is a perfect example of style over substance.

After an intro sequence where you play as The Wandering Soldier, the rest of the game has you playing as the Man in Pajamas. You never get a proper name, or look at their face, as both characters are guides to your adventures rather than the protagonist of them. Instead, the game puts forth the idea that dreams are where we can reshape events to match what we wished to have happened. As you play through you will encounter kids who don’t want to move, mole people who long to ring a bell and even a ferris wheel that wants to spin. The entire point of the game seems to be about providing insights or new looks on everyday moments of life and for that purpose, it succeeds.

Where it fails though is in how it brings that together, this is not around the shooting but with the pacing. The game opens with The Wandering Soldier, as he and a fellow soldier wander through some nameless place, but the soldier has a problem, he can’t shoot his gun. Eventually he is confronted by an enemy soldier who is going to kill them, but the game cuts back to the main menu before that happens. It was here that I thought I had done something wrong, as I was not expecting to see the main menu. I hit continue and pushed on and after a few more minutes of playing, this time as the Man in Pajamas, I was able to shoot and then I was taken back to the main menu. This is where the flow is broken, the game is constantly kicking you back out to the main menu. Now if the game was presented as little looks into the dreams of people, then sure I would understand the whole backing out thing, but that is not the case.

Sadly, it gets worse as the game is honestly boring to play. Yes, you have a gun to shoot, or guns eventually, but that is it. Now I knew that the world would require you to shoot at things, it was the big hook of the game, but I was hoping that between shooting, you had more to do, sadly not. What makes it worse is that the levels, for lack of a better term, are so tiny that you can often stand in one place and shoot everything around you. There are some folks who live in these worlds you can talk to, but they are more decoration that proper NPCs, in fact some streetlights have more personality than some of the humans. There are a number of interconnected stories that connect through everything, but those are rare and even when you realise, they are still too short to matter.

This is where the games visual style is its saving grace, because the Pointillism art style is incredible. The developers call this point cloud technology, which is true, but once everything is in place, then it becomes Pointillism. When you first enter a location, all the parts that makes up the world will be all over the place, shooting them puts them back to their normal spot. There are agitated auras that when shot will clear up a large part of the world as well, though they take a few hits. This helps give you a sense of greater impact, but the effect is still the same if you shot the world itself. There is nothing really beyond the style though, the locations are small, which does work in the favour of the visual style, but as many locations repeat you will see most things quite often.

While the game is visually impressive, the audio is just not interesting, in fact it’s downright boring. The games music was created by Baiyon, who also wrote and directed the game and it fits the dream like aesthetic on offer, but that is where the good ends. The games voice work is so dry, a desert would look waterlogged in comparison. There are people who are recounting a life not lived, or moments of time with a partner and they sound like they are being forced to read things off, rather than giving life to the words. When you hear a door speak, I would expect that to be a wooden performance, but for someone dealing with life’s frustrations, no thanks.

Dreams of Another is a game that looks amazing, but offers very little beyond that. There are some connecting threads between the various dreams, but there is nothing important that drives you to find out. The point cloud technology is the games saving grace, because it looks incredible and being able to reshape it is fun. Beyond that though, any dreams of an interesting game are just that, dreams.

The Score

5.0

Review code provided by Q-Games

The Pros

The point cloud technology is incredible and looks amazing in motion

The insights into what life and the objects within is a unique take…

The Cons

… but none of that gives you a reason to play

The voice work is so dry, I feel like they just dragged random people off the street to say the lines