Do you sleepwalk? I don’t. At least, not very often. One night, however, I woke up in my Grandma’s old fl at, trying to unlock the front door with what was, possibly, my dad’s right slipper. I blame falling asleep with the heater on in a small space. It was actually pretty scary, so if you do sleepwalk, you have my sympathies. Bad Dream Series is this exact experience in short, loosely sequential, adventure games, providing confusion and horror through simple line drawings on yellowing paper.
As you’re navigating each place, things change in ways that make a kind of sleepy sense. Were there three mutilated people in this waiting room last time I passed by, or four? Next, there may be two, or something entirely different, like a decapitated teddy. Did I cause that change somehow? Yes, I definitely took scissors from a child’s picture to cut away vines, but was that octopus always guarding the door, or only after I plucked out my own eyeball with a rusty nail?
There are six episodes currently released, progressively more polished and complex. The first several simply allow you to hover your cursor over items, take them and use them, being prompted for what to use where. It’s not so much puzzling as blundering around, trying things and, occasionally, thinking, “Aha, I know what to do with this.” Thematically, it makes a lot of sense, because who doesn’t dream they’re trying to stuff a toy car into the toaster for some unknowable purpose?
By Bridge, however, there is a discrete inventory and the structure more closely reflects a classic point and click system, in that you have to choose the object for the situation. The music and art is further detailed, too, and you’ll see ghostly smudges, shading, flickering patterns and cutscenes. The designer has extended on the original idea while clearly having an overall plan for the series. Gameplay has evolved slowly and in a way that uniquely challenges adventure game structure.
For example, finding severed hands in games is common. How often, however, is that hand your own? The old, “touch everything,” approach just became prohibitive, especially if you don’t fancy eating your fingers later. Cleverly, many items are referenced in several episodes, rehashing the horror of special moments. In particular, Butcher and its colour-by-numbers task, masterfully plays on ingrained expectations for the genre. Saying more would be to spoil it and I sorely want you to suffer as I suffered.
Having played all of the currently released episodes, I still feel like I have almost no insight into the overarching story. The enigmatic content raises so many questions and answers so few. Although none of the episodes appear to specifically involve the protagonist much at all, you have to wonder about the mind that is creating these dreams. Who am I? Am I disturbed or traumatised? Institutionalised? Why am I this way? Will I ever rest more peacefully? I earnestly hope to find out.