Dream is a complex beast. It comes across as a exploration game, but also flirts with puzzles, interactive narrative and even horror elements. The worlds it takes us to range from bizarre and beautiful to downright sinister or weird – and perhaps that’s why it feels so inconsistent.
Players enter the mind of unemployed graduate Howard Phillips, who has a lot of negative emotions to contend with. His bed serves as a portal to a dreaming hub world from which he can access three distinct dreamscapes, each with puzzles to solve, and thoughts to collect. The more players find, the clearer the story behind Howard’s emotions become, but it’s a difficult process of investment thanks largely to a divided mix of puzzles that have little or no connection to Howard’s struggles.
Two stand-out moments in Dream come in the form of a light beam puzzle and an Easter Egg hunt, the latter having some significance in the story. However there are some challenges that are just painful to deal with – and not in the way where you feel like a genius after figuring them out.
Dream is ambitious, but players will need to be persistent and forgiving to enjoy what it has to offer them.
SOMETIMES INTRIGUING, BUT ULTIMATELY AVERAGE