[h1]Rating[/h1]
[b]2/10[/b]
[h1]Worth it?[/h1]
[b]NO![/b]
Absolutely not!
Do [b]not[/b] buy this game.
[h1]Playtime[/h1]
It took me around 7 hours to complete the game, but you can probably do it in about 5.
I spent a lot of time alt-tabbing to take notes about how bad this game was.
[h1]Comparison[/h1]
It tries to be like [b]Limbo[/b], [b]Inside[/b] or [b]Little Nightmares[/b] but it's not. Cause those games were good.
[h1]Story[/h1]
At the beginning there's an intro, telling a story of a village where everyone got sick and went into a coma. Only one boy survived and went to look for Lady Death who could heal everyone. Not so bad, right? You get to the end of the first section (three levels), you don't get to meet Lady Death or any other characters. And before the second section starts, there's another video. This time it talks about a brother and a sister who went into the woods, met a Lady in Black and got sweet berries from her. See where this is going? Each section has a cutscene that tells a different fairy tale and it has absolutely no connection to the gameplay.
I played the English version with subtitles turned on and the subtitles were often different than what was being said in the videos.
[h1]Graphics[/h1]
I was playing at 2560x1080 and in the main menu, the game logo was cut in half.
Also, when changing options in the menu, this horrible transition happens where two menus are visible at the same time, overlapping. You can see both issues [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1425309746]here[/url].
The graphics in the game are not so bad, the art-style is interesting, but the animations are far from perfect.
In one of the levels I was sliding down on one of the planes, but there was no sliding animation, just the character moving down while standing still. It was even funnier when I tried to move and the character turned around, so he was sliding down by standing still backwards. As stupid as it sounds.
When you jump and grab onto a ledge, you need to pull yourself up. There's a climbing animation that's way too long and there's a glitch towards the end of the animation that makes it jump between frames in an unnatural way.
And the rain, oh man, that's just plain ugly.
[h1]Audio[/h1]
The music is actually the only part of this game that wasn't annoying. But I didn't hear enough of it because I was swearing out loud so much about how bad the rest of this game was.
What I hated most was the lack of consequence in playing some of the sounds. For example, in the first levels, you'll encounter enemies known as ticks. Some of the first ones you'll see are just walking on the ground, but not far after that, they will start falling from the sky. There's a sound of a tree branch breaking that accompanies their fall and it acts like a warning for you to not let them hit you. But a few minutes later you'll see more of them falling from the sky and there's no sound this time around.
You have to jump a lot in this game. And the "ugh" sound that plays on each jump starts playing a tiny bit too late, while you're already mid-air. It's incredibly irritating.
[h1]Mechanics[/h1]
The nightmare starts early, right in the main menu. When you drill down to an option that you want to modify and you make a change, you'd expect to stay in the same sub-menu. Nope, not here. Here it will throw you back to the top level of the main menu. It may not sound like much, but if you want to update two or three settings and have to drill down the same path each time it gets frustrating.
If you press the pause button during the game it will show you a menu with just one option - Return to Main Menu. There is no Resume option or Restart From Last Checkpoint. You have to be really careful about which button you press next - you may accidentally go back to the main menu and lose your current level's progress. That's right, when you Continue from the main menu it will start the last level from the beginning, not from the last checkpoint.
When the game is paused you can't move, but some enemies do still walk around.
And the jumping itself feels so unnatural like your character is defying gravity and slowly floating upwards (feels a bit like it's in slow-motion).
[h1]Gameplay[/h1]
It's a pretty basic platformer, you can go left/right and jump. You don't have any weapons, but over time you get three "abilities" - switching to an alternate reality where you can find some extra platforms to jump on, a flashlight (?!) to help in the darker levels and the option to create a stationary clone of yourself that can hold switches for you.
That alternative reality sounded interesting at first, but when I wanted to go there to avoid some enemies - surprise surprise - they also existed there. It's only useful in a few specific locations.
The ability to switch to an alternate reality has limited use time - there's a meter that goes down when it's in use. It is also mandatory to use in some of the locations. Meaning there's a chance you'll get stuck and be unable to proceed if you run out of juice. And like I already mentioned, there's no option in the menu to restart from the last checkpoint, so when that happens, you can either try to get killed and restart from a checkpoint or go back to the main menu and start the whole level from scratch.
The enemies walk on pre-programmed paths, which will make them change direction without any logical indication. And it's inconsistent too - sometimes they will just patrol the area from point A to B, other times they will just continue marching forward, falling into any holes that might be in front of them. And since you don't have any weapons, there are only two ways of moving past enemies - have them fall into a hole or jump over them.
I believe there was one area where I had to drop some sandbags on a three-headed skeleton (a boss?), but I'm not really sure, because the camera was zoomed-in too closely and I only saw me dropping the bags off a ledge and when I got back down the weird skeleton was no longer there.
Sometimes there are stones falling at you from the ceiling. When they hit you, you die. But when they don't hit you, they don't break on the ground, they just fall through it and keep on falling until they disappear from the screen.
Once I got to a place where two large platforms were moving away from each other. You have to quickly jump onto one, run across, jump over to the other one and then again to safety. But the first time I got there I didn't realize that you only get one chance to do it, so I waited for them to go back the other way so I can attempt this on the next try. There was no other try - the platforms kept on moving in opposite directions, completely ignoring any collision detection, moving into other land platforms and finally disappearing behind them.
There's a section in the game called Battlefield where you can see [b]naval mines[/b] just lying on the ground (?!?). If that wasn't stupid enough, they're buggy too. I was standing next to one of them and I used the ability to create a clone. The clone triggered the mine, it exploded and disappeared. I then moved into the empty space where the mine used to be and I still died.
[h1]Conclusion[/h1]
[b]Dream Alone[/b] is a horrible, horrible game. Worst one I played in years.
It pretends to be difficult, but what makes it hard is [b]not[/b] clever puzzles or interesting world creation - it's very bad game design and really poor execution.
[b]DO NOT BUY OR PLAY THIS GAME[/b]
[h1]Pros[/h1]
- after I realized how bad this game was, all the bugs and stupid design choices made me laugh
[h1]Cons[/h1]
- story
- animation
- sounds
- menus
- game mechanics
- level design
- gameplay
- traps
- lots and lots of bugs
[quote][i]For more reviews, follow my Curator page[/i] - [b][url=http://store.steampowered.com/curator/31210849-Sublime-Dent/]Sublime Dent[/url][/b].[/quote]
