No, not that kind. Media Molecule’s Dreams is their long-awaited follow-up to the LittleBigPlanet series on current-gen consoles. While LBP let you bash together platformer levels with the greatest of ease, Dreams offers significantly more robust game-making tools while asking more of creators. The platform just released after nearly a year in early access, so we thought it wise to jump into the expanding pool of user creations and show you some of the most impressive examples of what’s possible for this PS4 title.
Prometheus
First-person shooters are a popular genre among Dreams creators, and several of them look and feel solid already. One of the top of the heap is Prometheus, made by developer Rothniel. With an attractive visual style that blends low-saturation models with a limited palette, it’s immediately striking. The gameplay is also pretty nice, with some of the better enemy AI and interactions we’ve seen in Dreams thus far. Each of the few enemy types has unique behaviors and tactics, and it’s the way they are placed in areas that makes each segment feel different. Really good stuff that will only get better as it’s refined and expanded.
Slideout 3019
One of the hottest third-party games in the early PS1 era was Pysgnosis’s WipeOut, a neon-colored futuristic racer that boasted a hip EDM soundtrack and neck-whipping action. The last game in the series came out in August 2012, but one enterprising Dreams user is bringing it back as Slideout 3019. French creator Gauffreman is one of the platform’s most promising early developers, with a really solid grasp of what makes a game fun and exciting coupled with expert visual design. This one shows that every aspect of the experience is customizable, with stylish UI the icing on the cake. If stuff this pro is coming out this early, we can only imagine how it’s going to feel when people really get deep into Dreams.
Cubric
One of the most mechanically inventive concepts we’ve seen in Dreams so far, Cubric is a puzzle-platformer that takes place inside a series of six cubes. The player guides Cubric around and through a series of challenges that involve rotation, gravity manipulation and more. This is a deeply polished, nearly commercial-quality game that boasts cinematic cutscenes and well-balanced levels that test both reflexes and thinking skills. It won “Best Gameplay” at the first annual Impy Awards put on by Media Molecule to honor the top works of the beta period, and for good reason.
Topher Thebes and the Enchanted Crystal
One of the more impressive adventures constructed in Dreams so far, this lushly designed fantasy starts off with an extremely cliched plot, but the quality of the execution in Topher Thebes more than makes up for it. Topher is the hero of legend, prophesied to cleanse the world of Mer’s corruption. Cute, cartoony designs, high-quality voice acting, and a rich and stylish environment combine to whet our appetite for more. The game itself is solid 3D platforming, nothing remarkable but the joy here is in the craftsmanship.
Pig Detective 2
While Little Big Planet mostly kept designers married to the side-scrolling platformer genre (unless they really messed around with some advanced tricks), Dreams is all about letting you experiment in just about any kind of game you can imagine. A great example from the beta is Pig Detective 2, an old-school adventure made by a two-person team. In it, the titular porcine sleuth heads to the Old West to pick up clues and figure out the plans of the mysterious Mr. Rayburn. Great environments and a dry sense of humor make this one a great place to start.
Ruckus: Just Another Natural Disaster
Another early project that really delivered in terms of character and world design was Ruckus, a collaborative project by a Japanese team that lets you take control of a cute, blobby little giant monster and wreck an island. This started out as a non-interactive diorama, which was cool, but then the team added a controller and gave you the ability to eat battleships, shoot lasers and knock over buildings with your tail. The action sometimes cuts away to news broadcasts of your rampage for variety, and there are tons of little hidden secrets to find in the game’s robust, character-filled map.
Beyond The Nightmare
There are a number of creators working in the horror genre with Dreams, and it’s looking to be a pretty potent platform for them. One of the most robust and well-considered is Beyond The Nightmare, by Porkepik56. This one really understands that the essence of horror is implication, so it keeps things out of frame just long enough to really ratchet up the dread. Fully voiced cutscenes and large, detailed environments help sell the experience. It might not be the most original thing we’ve seen, but it’s executed so brilliantly and slickly that it has us wanting more.
Beech Pool
It’s sort of cheating to spotlight creations made by Media Molecule staff, but this was one early example that the company used to show just how robust Dreams was from a physics simulation standpoint. Senior Principal Designer John Beech not only built a totally functional pool table to regulation specs in the system, he also modeled a classic Victorian room around it, complete with a raging fireplace to warm your bones. It’s a striking illustration of what a strong creative vision can accomplish in conjunction with the tools that Dreams provides.
Wolf Woods
One of the coolest and most atmospheric side-scrollers we’ve seen in Dreams, shandyboy1975’s Wolf Woods uses an art style that is reminiscent of indie titles like Limbo, with black paper cutout-like figures moving in front of a parallax-scrolling background. Wolf Woods is still very early in development, but it’s a testament to the flexibility of the platform that it already has a strong visual identity in place.
Art’s Dream
Let’s close this out with an entry from Media Molecule themselves, who released a proof of concept / story mode for Dreams when the full game dropped. Art’s Dream, which follows a jazz bassist in the middle of a breakdown through myriad game genres and fantasy sequences. This is a spectacular illustration of exactly how powerful Dreams is, delivering two hours of highly polished gameplay with tons of unique assets and challenges. You could absolutely sell this as a full game and it’d be better than a bunch of the stuff on the PlayStation Store. The sky’s definitely the limit with Dreams.
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