Dreams is a game creation game by Media Molecule, the one behind the LittleBigPlanet series. However, this scope of Dreams is much bigger, giving the player more tools to create bigger and more complex games. It puts an emphasis on user generated content, so that players can create, share and play each other’s creations. Sadly, it never gained a big audience or much traction.
The game has a quick tutorial at first to get you to choose your “imp”, an onscreen fluffball that you use to control and interact with things in the game. The default is using the motion sensor in the controller, but thankfully you can change it to the analogue sticks if you want to. The motion control isn’t too bad, but it is still not the ideal way to do it and it can get awkward at times. After that, you can decide whether to play levels that others have already created or start creating your own. You’ll get a quick tutorial the first time you get into either of those two modes.
To give you a taste of what can be done with the creation tools, Media Molecule created a “game” that you can play, Art’s Dream. In it, you follow Art, who had left his band, but you can tell that he is having issues moving past it. He keeps thinking towards the past and missing the support of the other band members. You end up playing through his dreams.
Art’s Dream is split up into different sections, or levels. There is a platformer where you control one of two teddy bears. One can shoot discs while the other uses a hammer. You traverse the environments jumping around and dodging obstacles to get to the other. Another is also a platformer where you control a robot that lights things up. While the last section is Art himself, as he goes through this weird dream-like area and is trying to make sense of what is happening. To be honest, the whole game is kind of weird and too fantastical and whimsical.
Even in Art’s Dream, you use the imp to interact with things. It does tend to slow things down and make it awkward at times. The graphics are heavily stylized, so they are an acquired taste. It lacks the charm of the LittleBigPlanet series and of course, the length and game is nowhere near as meaty since you can finish it in around three hours or less. There are prize bubbles scattered around each level which you collect to unlock more things to use when you’re in the creation mode.
Art’s Dreams was designed to be short, describe as a movie length interactive musical. The change in different game genres can be annoying, particularly as it doesn’t do any specific one of them perfectly. There are niggling control issues, such as the platforming or combat not being as tight as it should, so it can feel floaty and wonky. Yes, they are not supposed to be as polished or developed as a proper full game, but it’s still little bit disappointing.
After spending most of its time in the three genres, it does another big genre change in the end, including the final boss battle. It was fun as it trended towards being more action based, however, the constant trial and error gameplay was not great design. Being forced to repeat sections as the sections were designed clearly enough is sloppy. The constant flip flop between slow and fast pacing is inconsistent either. The story is too much like the game’s name, being too dreamy and abstract. It had a good and meaningful concept, but can be too pretentious, or maybe just unfocused, at times, due to it taking place within a dream.
Nevertheless, even if Art’s Dream is not to your liking, there are plenty of other creations to play, which is the whole point. After its release, Media Molecule has a few other additions too that you can try. Otherwise, you can play through other players’ creations, but that means you will have to sift out the good from the bad. It’s not too hard as you can just use the filters to get the most liked or most played first. You can play platformers or a racing game, and some of them are genuinely impressive.
Some of Media Molecules other creations include A Long Time Ago... which is a puzzler, but perhaps the other more interesting game is Ancient Dangers: A Bat’s Tale, which is a dungeon crawler. It gives you two difficulties, easy and hard, with the latter giving you access to a scoreboard. It’s got a cartoony aesthetic and it’s a basic dungeon crawler where you can play solo or coop, with your character fighting through three chapters. There’s a big swing attack and combo, block, dodge and some light puzzles, but it’s still very fun.
Tren is another puzzle type game, where you control a miniature / toy train and go through tracks to beat each level within a time limit. It starts off easy enough but gets substantially harder. It’s cute and has a fun aesthetics, but you can’t help but feel that all these “games” by Media Molecule are just too bite-sized and not substantial enough. Their gameplay is simple, and they can all be finished in around two hours, if it captures enough of your interest that it. Given that there are several of these, it does add up to around six to ten hours of content, so it eventually justifies the cost of the game.
Just like LittleBigPlanet, the user generated content is a blessing and curse. There are some amazing designs, and you can tell a lot of effort has been put into it. Then there are mostly the dregs. However, one thing is that a lot of the content has weird physics. Like a driving game where the handling isn’t tight, or a remake of Sonic or Crash Bandicoot, where the jumping just doesn’t feel quite right. There’s always something that feels off, no matter how much effort the user put into it.
On the game creation side, it’s a whole other mode and you can spend hours if it is something that interests you. There are plenty of tutorials within the game to get you started, and the controls are designed to be used by a controller, so they don’t feel too awkward or tough to use. The tutorials even have levels which gives you great ideas on what you can do and what is possible.
Overall, Dreams is an ambitious project, much more so than LittleBigPlanet. It holds a great promise, being able to create, share and play an unlimited amount of full length games is amazing. Unfortunately, the reality is that it takes too much effort for other players to pump out truly good content. There is quality stuff, but those end up being short, taking less than ten minutes to complete. However, Media Molecule has managed to create and share a number of “games”, so that it can still justify the asking price.
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