The first game I played in Dreams
was a cute Captain Toad-inspired puzzle platformer called Pip
Gemwalker. It's about a Sloth who has to collect hidden gems across
seven increasingly-complex levels. The second game I played was Blade
Gunner, a Resogun-style twin-stick shooter with upgrades, an in-game
store, and online leaderboards. After that I hopped into Art Therapy, a
first-person game where your goal, as a disgruntled artist wielding a
baseball bat, is to smash your way through a museum without any of the
guards catching you in the act. The fourth was Shadows Dance at Olivetop
Reach, a fantasy RPG with turn-based combat and an XP-based levelling
system.
Each of these games is vastly different from the
last, not just in terms of genre and gameplay mechanics, but their use
(or disuse) of cutscenes, voice acting, art style, music, narrative, and
so on. The one thing they each have in common is that they were all
created using the exact same set of tools. That's Dreams in a nutshell: a
platform where you can create pretty much anything you can put your
mind to. Developer Media Molecule has continued the mantra of "play,
create, share" that it used to define the LittleBigPlanet series and
applied it to a much more ambitious concept with a significantly broader
scope. Metaphorically speaking, if LittleBigPlanet is a single country,
then Dreams is the entire universe. There's just so much promise and
potential for the burgeoning Dreams community to create some innovative
and inspired art, all by using an intuitive toolset that's made
accessible via a streamlined creation suite and the use of informative
hands-on tutorials. Whether these creations take the form of an
hour-long video game, a short film, a simple visual spectacle, or
something as simple as a sound effect that another player can use in
their own project. The possibilities are endless, which I know is a
tired cliché, but in Dreams--more than anywhere else--it actually
applies.
There are two parts to Dreams which both branch out like
roots from a tree. DreamShaping is where you can begin creating your own
projects and find myriad tutorials that will teach you how.
DreamSurfing, meanwhile, lets you find other people's creations and play
them for yourself. It's also where you'll find Media Molecule's own
creations, including Art's Dream. If you want to construct a level in
LittleBigPlanet, you are always confined to the base template of a
side-scrolling 3D platformer. Inevitably, some people found inventive
ways to circumnavigate this template, but compared to what you can do in
Dreams it's overly restrictive. To demonstrate the monumental shift
between LittleBigPlanet and Dreams, Media Molecule has created a
showcase of sorts, placing Art's Dream front and centre when you jump
into DreamSurfing for the first time.
Art's Dream is,
for lack of a better term, Dreams' story mode or campaign. What makes it
so fascinating, however, is that the two-hour-long game was made
entirely using the same creation tools available to everyone. Media
Molecule didn't cut any corners or cheat with some hocus pocus
development magic--unless you count a team of highly skilled
professionals creating a game with tools they're intimately familiar
with as cheating. The fact that Dreams' toolset allows for the creation
of something like Art's Dream is genuinely incredible, but it's also a
touching and melancholic tale that's completely different to any story
Media Molecule has told before. The narrative centres on a troubled
double bass player who quit his band and alienated all of his friends,
leading to a life of regrets. It's not quite as depressing as it sounds,
meshing the more dour notes with plenty of hopefulness, charm, and that
Media Molecule whimsy, but it is a notably mature tale for the studio.
Art's
Dream is split into three disparate parts. Each one is integral to the
story being told, but they're also used to demonstrate the variety
that's possible in Dreams' creation suite. There's a combat-focused
platformer section where you play as childhood toys trekking across a
surreal countryside; a puzzle platformer starring an Astro Bot-style
robot who's travelling through a techno-forest; and a point-and-click
adventure that includes dialogue choices, item-based puzzle solutions,
and some fantastic musical interludes. The whole game cycles through
these three parts as it briskly moves along, introducing new mechanics
and ideas the deeper you go. The shift between genres, art styles, and
camera perspectives is consistently impressive without ever feeling
disjointed, due primarily to Art's compelling narration tying it all
together. Eventually the adventure reaches a thrilling final crescendo
that coalesces each story thread into one and throws in some Bullet Hell
and endless runner sections just to up the ante. As a singular
creation, Art's Dream is an enjoyable two-hour adventure with striking
abstract visuals, but it's also a statement and a promise of what's
achievable in Dreams.
That's not to say you'll be
creating something as complex and grandiose as Art's Dream within a
couple of days, months, or even a year. The DreamShaping creation suite
is initially a daunting proposition. With the freedom to create anything
you can put your mind to, the toolset has to be exhaustive to
compensate, so your first gander into DreamShaping is guaranteed to be
overwhelming. Fortunately, the Dreams Workshop is chock-full of
informative tutorials that run through each tool and fundamental
technique that's available to you. There are beginner classes that focus
on the basics of edit mode, from getting you accustomed with its
control scheme to teaching you how to place platforms, resize objects,
and clone items.
The control scheme is definitely a
sticking point, though. There are three to choose from but none of them
are especially intuitive. Navigating around a 3D environment with the
left and right sticks while using motion controls to move a cursor
initially feels cumbersome, particularly when you're trying to be
precise and hone in on the finer details. The undo button comes in handy
during these instances, allowing you to instantly go back and erase
your last action, but it's clear the DualShock has inherent limitations
when faced with a creation suite this complex.
When it comes to creating your own project, Dreams gives you the flexibility to ease yourself in.
The
PlayStation Move controllers fare slightly better when it comes to
sculpting, mainly because it feels much more natural to mold and shape
objects with your hands. For instance, the ability to drag items towards
and away from you just by performing the same physical action yourself
stands out in this regard. The Move control scheme does come with its
own unwieldy nuances, however, giving the DualShock an advantage when it
comes to navigating menus and controlling the camera--which in turn
makes designing levels a slightly more fluid experience with the
DualShock in hand. Whichever control scheme you choose, the mixture of
imperfect motion controls and imperfect regular controls does present an
additional learning curve. The more you get used to them the more
comfortable they become, but it does take a while to grasp.
Other
tutorials delve into more specific areas of game design, with
step-by-step guides to painting and coloring, tutorials on how to
animate characters and objects by hand, and "How To" videos that teach
you how to quickly assemble a level, among other techniques. Beyond this
are advanced, intermediate, and masterclass tutorials that teach you
how to create your own original music and sound or run through how to
assemble connectors and use physics. There's a tutorial where you learn
how to create hitboxes on enemies that react to projectiles, whether
it's a bullet fired in a first-person shooter or a flying disc in a
platformer. In short, there's a lot.
Learning it all
means devoting a significant amount of time, so it's good that the
tutorials are incredibly helpful and enlightening. Each one delves into
the inner workings of game design in a way that's easy to consume
without it ever coming across as patronising, as developers--through
narration--share their insight and expertise on particular subjects in a
hands-on setting that gradually guides you along. The toolset is
streamlined compared to Unity or Unreal Engine in order to make the
creation suite slightly more accessible for your average Joe, but the
tutorials provide a greater appreciation for how challenging game
development truly is.
They
also maintain Dreams' focus on creativity, actively encouraging you to
express yourself even when learning how the toolset works. This makes
working your way through each tutorial an enjoyable experience when
tutorials can so often be a drag. Take creating a character from scratch
as a prime example. There are precise steps to follow, including a
video showing what your character could look like, yet the narration
encourages you to add your own flourishes and create a concoction unique
to you, so long as you gain an understanding of how the tools work
along the way.
When it comes to creating your own
project, Dreams gives you the flexibility to ease yourself in because
not every piece of it has to be wholly your own. Media Molecule has
numerous presets for you to choose from, but other players can also
upload their own creations, whether it's an entire environment, a single
character, or a piece of music, which you can then download and use in
your own creations. This establishes a tangible sense of community that
bleeds into every other aspect of Dreams, from DreamShaping to
DreamSurfing.
A lot of the games available to play right
now were collaborative efforts, with characters or objects designed by
different players. You might have no interest in creating an entire game
yourself, instead opting to find a niche creating characters,
buildings, or even music that other people can use in their own games.
I'll probably never be great at designing levels, but there's a certain
satisfaction to glean from using the game's sound and music studio,
paint tools, and sculpture moulding to conceive bespoke creations. Maybe
I'll make a tree that someone likes and uses in their own game to
populate a forest, or use the comb tool and flow effect to form a raging
river. I might even mesh various sound elements together to create a
baritone growl that another player applies to an antagonistic monster in
their own game. It's this community-centric approach that inspires me
to learn and create more.
Dreams is like YouTube for video games, where a single hour can take you on a journey through so many disparate and imaginative experiences.
The
simple act of making stuff is also just enjoyable to do. There's a
tactile feeling to using the various paint strokes or object moulding
that's satisfying to play around with, grabbing and pulling at a
sculpture to establish a shape before using facial features from the
community to devise an unorthodox character. The way you create sound
and music is similarly freeform, with the option of loading up a
pre-made virtual instrument that you can then play around with using
basic button inputs. I may not know the first thing about music
composition or sound design, but I've listened to enough to know how to
create a rudimentary tune--the toolset's intuitiveness just makes it
possible. Obviously, designing an entire game with mechanics that
actually work is a challenging process, but the ease with which you can
simply jump in and make objects and sounds means ensures that the
creation suite is engaging to use even if you're just messing around.
On
the flip side, you can always ignore the creation side completely and
fall down a rabbit hole of playing other people's work. Dreams is like
YouTube for video games, where a single hour can take you on a journey
through so many disparate and imaginative experiences. There are the
usual imitators with myriad recreations of levels from the likes of
Sonic the Hedgehog, Metal Gear Solid, and Crash Bandicoot, but there's
also value in seeing these familiar characters, environments, and
mechanics recreated because it offers an easy way to gauge what the
toolset is capable of. For instance, there's a Dead Space remake that
features a primitive version of the original game's limb dismemberment,
and a 3D Mario clone that authentically recreates the mustachioed
plumber's distinctive animations. Some of these imitators are inspired,
too. One imagines what Silent Hills could have been if Konami didn't
pull the plug, adding some LA Noire-esque interrogations to the mix,
while another stars Persona 5's Morgana in a 3D platformer about
stealing pizza that's a natural fit for the anthropomorphic character.
The
majority are original creations, however, and it's their sheer
diversity that really stands out. There's a game called Southpaw Cooking
that "simulates" cooking with your left hand because your right is too
busy holding a phone to your ear. Others are more elaborate, like
Project Ikelos, a Souls-like action game, or the short music video Duet,
which features a green ukulele-playing character and a pink dinosaur
with a kazoo. One of my personal favorites is Dog's Run, a game where
you get to play as the creator's own pet dog, Binkie. It's a classic
platforming collect-a-thon like Banjo-Kazooie, but I found it oddly
heartwarming because of its furry protagonist. It actually inspired me
to try and improve my non-existent skills in the creation suite, just so
I can one day immortalise my own dog in Dreams.
Finding
each of these games is relatively simple thanks to Media Molecule's
beautiful curation of the DreamSurfing area. The homepage includes
trending creations, favorites picked by Media Molecule itself, and
recommendations based on your play history. There's also the Annual IMPY
Awards which reward the best creations of the year, with lists of all
the winners in categories like best visuals, best narrative, best
animation, and best gameplay. Media Molecule also hosts intermittent
game jams where the community is tasked with creating something adhering
to a particular theme in a short amount of time. You can get involved
and create something yourself or simply play other people's creations
and vote for your favorite. If you're not sure what to play you can hit
Autosurf and be transported directly into a random game, or if you want
to search for something specific there's a robust search engine that
lets you find what you're looking for with a few simple keywords. Media
Molecule has made it so you can effortlessly hop from one game or
singular experience to another and discover something worthwhile.
Dreams
was in early access for less than a year, but the small community it's
built since then has already created some stunning projects that exhibit
imagination, innovation, and artistry. Now that the full game is out in
the wild, it's going to be fascinating to see how the community
continues to grow and what creations arise from that growth. Media
Molecule has devised something really special with Dreams, placing a
hefty toolset in players' hands where the only limitations are your
skills, imagination, and time. There's nothing else quite like it, and
it feels like a culmination of everything the studio has been working
towards since the first LittleBigPlanet. The presentation is too
charming, the tutorials too informative, active, and engaging, while
playing and finding other people's creations is a breeze. Dreams is a
refined constructor for building a wide variety of games, and a
community-centric showcase where others can play them. It's a stunning
achievement that encourages limitless creative expression, a place where
people can come together, collaborate, and explore each other's
imaginations. It's a tool for the fools who dream, and one of the most
innovative releases in years.
