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Feb 14, 2020 · Dreams is like shopping for free in a game store, where there are almost exclusively cheap knock-offs on the shelves! Besides that, this game is the most user-friendly game-building tool on the market, which will probably produce some great things in the future.
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Dreams is the space you go to where you go to play and...
- PlayStation 4
Metacritic aggregates music, game, tv, and movie reviews...
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- A world of pure imagination.
- Back to School
- Share Play
- Making Waves
- 14 Community Creations Made In Dreams
- Verdict
By Simon Cardy
Updated: May 1, 2020 4:03 pm
Posted: Feb 13, 2020 4:00 pm
What is Dreams? Well, It's pots of paints, a ball of clay, a games compendium, a music studio, a creative classroom, an animation programme, a social network, your first footsteps into game development. And crucially, often incredible.
Media Molecule’s follow up to the LittleBigPlanet series follows its established mantra of play, create, and share, but takes it to an all-new level. Whatever path you choose to take, getting lost down it is easily done as new bursts of joy are discovered around every corner. Like a Mary Poppinsesque bottomless bag of creativity, you never quite know what you’ll end up playing when booting up Dreams, or what inspiration will be sparked inside you to sculpt, paint, or engineer yourself. It’s a highly ambitious concept, and one that has been magically brought to life.
When starting up Dreams for the first time, you’d be forgiven for not knowing where to start. After a short string of basic, yet important tutorials, the most alluring and arguably best place to head is Art’s Dream - the two to three-hour story mode created by Media Molecule all within Dreams itself. You follow the titular Art, a down-and-out musician who’s recently abandoned his post as a double bass player in a jazz troupe, as he goes slaloming through three distinct settings: a fairytale-like rural area, an industrial world laden with steam trains and neon-soaked cobbles, and a digital forest where steel takes the place of wood and LEDs flicker like owls eyes watching from their branches.
When first casting your eye over Dreams’ creation suite, it can be a worryingly overwhelming proposition. This isn’t a game where you can afford to dive in blind. But after completing the first set of basic tutorials it all started to make sense. The multitude of multicoloured glyphs that sit at the top of the screen soon meant things to me and I actually found myself enjoying the tutorials rather than them being tiresome chores as they can often be in other games. The key to this being that even while it’s teaching you the basics, Dreams is encouraging you to be creative at every turn – nudging you to not simply follow instructions when building a simple bridge or painting a garden, but teaching you to be willing to put your own spin on it.
Dreams is encouraging you to be creative at every turn.
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Media Molecule has done an outstanding job at teaching you the basics and in some cases so more advanced techniques, with the most complex batch of tutorials being a series of Masterclasses led by developers who take you step by step through their respective areas of expertise. These include Sculpting a Male Bust, Stylistic Scene Creation, Sculpting and Level Assembly, and Remixing Dreamiverse Dash (one of the Media Molecule designed games included). As of now there are only these four masterclasses available, which is a shame because I’ve found them to be the most engaging lessons, whether creating alongside or simply watching the artists at work.
Another of my favourite sub-menus of tutorials are the “How To..” videos. These range from beginner-level creations such as making a window to more advanced techniques like “How To... Make a Shooty Cannon”. Pleasingly, these are much more abundant than their Masterclass cousins and I’d especially recommend them if you’re planning on delving into the game-making side of Dreams. Overall, there’s no shortage of tutorials to get sucked into when you begin Dreams, with the vast majority being informative without stepping into patronising, and really good help you find your feet in what can be an intimidating place at first.
Even after absorbing a lot of tutorials, though, controlling Dreams can initially feel unintuitive. To some extent this is to be expected: Dreams is attempting to do things that a home console has never done before, so naturally it will have button inputs that are unfamiliar. I spent a while trying to work out which of the three different ways to control Dreams was best for me. The default, which involves using the DualShock 4’s motion controls to move my Imp (your smiley, colourful cursor) around the screen, ended up being my chosen weapon after spending time with each, but in truth I found it hard to find the perfect combination for me.
Many will see the prospect of being able to make their own games as the most enticing aspect of Dreams. Never before has this been attempted on consoles, at least not to this level of scale and complexity and open-endedness. No longer are the LittleBigPlanet-shaped chains of side-scrolling platforming tied around your ambitions when it comes to Media Molecule’s in-game game-making. Just from a quick browse of the Dreamiverse hub screen you can see the range of game genres and artistic styles people have already achieved. From the remarkably polished Wipeout homage “SlidEout 3019” to the sloth-led, Captain Toad inspired mascot platformer “Pip Gemwalker”, the level of depth displayed is astounding. Even though you shouldn’t expect to reach these heights straightaway, it’s empowering to know that it can be done.
No longer are the LittleBigPlanet-shaped chains of side-scrolling platforming tied around your ambitions.
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Once again, the tutorials are key when first stepping into Dreams game design – especially if, like me, you’re taking your first baby steps into making a game of any kind. If you played a LittleBigPlanet game you’ll be on familiar ground to start with, however, as the basics you’re taught relate to basic platformers, whether that be programming a character with a jump function or connecting a button to a bridge that lowers upon pressing.
This is where ‘logic’ comes into play and things start to get exponentially more complicated. Mercifully, the lessons are taught at a kind pace and I never found myself lost in the tangle of wires and cables connecting objects together at first. The more ambitious I got, however, the less I started to build from scratch and started to take advantage of maybe Dreams’ biggest asset: that ability to use others’ assets to create your own.
The shareability of all items uploaded and made public means that you don’t have to – nor are you expected to – create a whole game independently from scratch. Alongside a couple of Media Molecule provided templates, such as a basic first-person shooter, you can also remix creations by the community. My first ‘game’ was a combination of the aforementioned FPS template, another user’s small platforming section, and a gigantic wedge of waxy cheese that I sculpted, which rotates when stepping on a button. You can then shoot at the cheese, because why wouldn’t you?
Surfing through the Dreamiverse of community created content can become an absolute time-suck in the best way possible. Akin to spelunking down wikiholes or losing yourself in YouTube algorithms, you pick a starting point – whether that be something grand like high science-fiction or a more mundane notion like an apple - and before you know it you’...
Just as you can create whatever you like in Dreams, you can view pretty much whatever you want as well. There are all sorts of games enveloping every genre imaginable, from cute character platformers to first-person military shooters, to even hour-plus-long action RPGs. There’s also, of course, a large helping of imitations and re-imaginings of established franchises such as the Batman Arkham series or the Sonic franchise – seriously, there’s so many Sonic games. If you feel like being a bit more cultured, though, you can browse though the art section and effectively spend a day at a gallery without leaving your sofa as vast watercolours and ridiculously detailed sculptures fill your screen.
Then there’s some dreams that combine the two and offer completely singular experiences that you just wouldn’t be able to find anywhere else. The most pertinent example of this perhaps being “Haus of Bevis”, a walking sim of sorts that begins as a tour of a sculpture gallery before taking a sinister turn. I won’t spoil it, as it’s really something that you should experience for yourself.
You never know quite what you’re going to get, and that’s the unique joy of Dream Surfing.
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You never know quite what you’re going to get, and that’s the unique joy of Dream Surfing. I’ve played BABATUNDE The Father Has Returned, an arena fighter, multiple times due to its fluid-feeling movement and dynamic power-kick animation, but also spent the best part of 15 minutes staring at a fully realised cooked breakfast as my eyes glaze over at the sight of a puddle of baked beans. There’s also the “Autosurf” button, the variation on Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” which selects you a random taster of the Dreamiverse. It’s like a friend offering chocolate to you from a box without knowing what flavour each is; it’s a lucky dip. You may get one of your favourites, and savour it, or get one that you’re not overly keen on, but at the end of the day it’s free chocolate and how bad can that be?
If you want to take less of a chance, however, then there’s a helpful tagging system for all creations that lets you be more specific with what you’re looking for. Looking for a shooter? Then search “shooter”. Want it to be third-person? Then add that. Looking for something with aliens in? Simply add “alien” as a keyword, and so on and so on until you find something that catches your eye. Adding more tags will help you narrow down your search until you’ve found the exact thing you’re looking for. It’s a smart system that, along with the numbers of thumbs up a dream has received, gives you a clearer indication of what might be worth spending your valuable time on.
It’s a cliche, but Dreams really is something that needs to be played to fully grasp an understanding of. It’s unlike anything else: an ambitious project that has been expertly brought to life by Media Molecule, and an audacious experiment in game design that gives you endless ways to enjoy your time with it. The creation tools allow for ultimate e...
- Simon Cardy
Dreams is a very bad company that should be reported and closed down. They sell mattresses obviously unfit for purpose without any quality check. They refuse to take back the mattress and give any refund, even for any mattress that was deemed unsuitable after sleeping on it just once.
- (322)
- -,--, High Wycombe
Dreams Reviews. 83,592 • Excellent. 4.8. VERIFIED COMPANY. www.dreams.co.uk. Visit this website. Write a review. Reviews 4.8. 83,592 total. 5-star. 88% 4-star. 6% 3-star. 1% 2-star. < 1% 1-star. 4% Filter. Sort: Most relevant. ES. Edwina S. 1 review. GB. 14 hours ago. Dreamy delivery!
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Dreams has 5 stars! Check out what 82,798 people have written so far, and share your own experience. | Read 21-40 Reviews out of 80,751
Mar 3, 2020 · Made in Dreams. By Richard Wakeling on March 3, 2020 at 8:30AM PST. Where to buy. Dreams. GameSpot may get a commission from retail offers. The first game I played in Dreams was a cute...
Feb 17, 2020 · Dreams Review: A Stellar And Enjoyable Creation Tool. By Rob Gordon. Published Feb 17, 2020. Dreams is an incredibly ambitious creation tool that holds the potential for near-unlimited experiences - providing its player base keeps up pace. Sony has released a number of extremely song exclusives for the PlayStation 4.
