Dreams of Another is the newest game from Q-Games director Baiyon. Th game feels like it is built around his sensibilities as an artist which explores the nature of creation, built around the theme, “No creation without destruction,” and that is certainly well executed here. It’s a narrative adventure that primarily features the mechanic of using guns to shoot at environments that is supposed to represent their creation, though it feels more like a bunch of dreamy, out of focus particles that solidify into buildings, ground, objects, and people that gives this game a very unique look and vibe really fitting for the game.
The story focuses on the Man in Pajamas that appears to be in some sort of deep sleep or coma for most of the game, so you’re following a number of story threads in his mind that are a bit overwhelming early on. You begin the game with a soldier that won’t fire his gun before turning to a story about a kid who is moving out of town with his parents. Beyond that first chapter, you get a handful of more threads involving fish, a clown selling theme park rides, and more that are thrown at you that all progress pretty slowly.
That had me concerned that the game was much longer than I was expecting becauce it sends you back to the main menu after almost every little vignette it presents. This was a surprising framing for the game that made it feel repetitive at some points. It has the scene of the Man in Pajamas in bed on the main menu change slightly throughout the campaign to at least give you some sense that you’re making progress, if you’re paying attention to that. I ended up tracking my progress through the game using the PS5 dashboard progress counter to figure out that there were six chapters with most of my playtime being in the first half, as it picks up the pace in the latter half. It has a ton of trophies that it is constantly doling out to you throughout the campaign with a small portion of collector trophies to round out the list where I had just two remaining when I beat the game. I enjoyed my time with the Dreams of Another, but it’s an unusual way for a game like this to be set up like that.
The general framework of each vignette is that the Man in Pajamas shows up in an area you’ll recognize quickly. You often start in these same areas for each storyline where you start shooting at the particles to bring the scene into focus. You’ll have some characters in each area that you can talk to with the main constant being the soldier from the intro, who is hanging out in every scene and accepts the trinkets you find in each area that he takes in exchange for a random grab bag of boosts and ammo you’ll use later. You can also pick an item to give to him or let the soldier pick a random item to get a reward, though he’ll only take three items per dream when you can collect a lot more in each area. It limits you from getting too much extra ammo for your side weapons, though it makes me wonder if certain items do give specific rewards or if that’s actually randomized. The other boosts were things like a sprint and a guide wisp that points out the person or area you need to reach to progress the story.
The other big thing that can happen in these dreams is something akin to a boss fight. You’ll see certain notable objects have a blue, translucent aura pop out of them, and you have to shoot orange weak spots until you’ve “calmed” down its aura, so that it can return to its original place. They’re never tough outside of maybe requiring more precise shooting or the object causes the environment to unfocus in front of you, but those are merely a means of delaying the inevitable. As a narrative-focused game, I didn’t expect any challenge because you’re just meant to keep progressing without anything being able to stop that. The shooting controls also work well enough for the sort of game that it is, despite the controls being a little flimsy at times when it feels either unresponsive or it is too eager to put the gun away while looking for things to shoot. It’s hard to describe how weird it gets.
The stories in Dreams of Another are solid, though nothing here is all that complex. You get a lot of writing about the art of creation and the characters in each of these storylines that go through their own troubles, but nothing here really moved me in any way. The best storyline here is the one about the Man in Pajama’s son trying to find a proper heir to keep his father’s legacy going, which takes a couple of interesting turns before the end of the game. I wouldn’t put this game’s story up there with the best in its genre, but it was enjoyable enough to deal with its disjointed presentation that breaks up any pacing it could have had.
There are no real problems with Dreams of Another, as it’s a perfectly fine game with some neat moments and fun visuals. I got really into just shooting up these environments to see them come into focus because it looks so good when everything comes together. The way the story is broken up into pieces as you have to keep hitting Start on the main menu to resume the campaign every few minutes is probably it’s biggest detriment that needed some other solution.
Baiyon has made another cool game that has just enough flaws to keep the average player at bay that isn’t bought into the concept based on the director’s pedigree alone. I would say that PixelJunk Eden is still his best work, but this may be his most interesting project of all, despite its flaws.
Dreams of Another is the newest game from Q-Games director Baiyon. Th game feels like it is built around his sensibilities as an artist which explores the nature of creation, built around the theme, “No creation without destruction,” and that…
Dreams of Another is the newest game from Q-Games director Baiyon. Th game feels like it is built around his sensibilities as an artist which explores the nature of creation, built around the theme, “No creation without destruction,” and that is certainly well executed here. It’s a narrative adventure that primarily features the mechanic of using guns to shoot at environments that is supposed to represent their creation, though it feels more like a bunch of dreamy, out of focus particles that solidify into buildings, ground, objects, and people that gives this game a very unique look and vibe really fitting for the game.
The story focuses on the Man in Pajamas that appears to be in some sort of deep sleep or coma for most of the game, so you’re following a number of story threads in his mind that are a bit overwhelming early on. You begin the game with a soldier that won’t fire his gun before turning to a story about a kid who is moving out of town with his parents. Beyond that first chapter, you get a handful of more threads involving fish, a clown selling theme park rides, and more that are thrown at you that all progress pretty slowly.
That had me concerned that the game was much longer than I was expecting becauce it sends you back to the main menu after almost every little vignette it presents. This was a surprising framing for the game that made it feel repetitive at some points. It has the scene of the Man in Pajamas in bed on the main menu change slightly throughout the campaign to at least give you some sense that you’re making progress, if you’re paying attention to that. I ended up tracking my progress through the game using the PS5 dashboard progress counter to figure out that there were six chapters with most of my playtime being in the first half, as it picks up the pace in the latter half. It has a ton of trophies that it is constantly doling out to you throughout the campaign with a small portion of collector trophies to round out the list where I had just two remaining when I beat the game. I enjoyed my time with the Dreams of Another, but it’s an unusual way for a game like this to be set up like that.
The general framework of each vignette is that the Man in Pajamas shows up in an area you’ll recognize quickly. You often start in these same areas for each storyline where you start shooting at the particles to bring the scene into focus. You’ll have some characters in each area that you can talk to with the main constant being the soldier from the intro, who is hanging out in every scene and accepts the trinkets you find in each area that he takes in exchange for a random grab bag of boosts and ammo you’ll use later. You can also pick an item to give to him or let the soldier pick a random item to get a reward, though he’ll only take three items per dream when you can collect a lot more in each area. It limits you from getting too much extra ammo for your side weapons, though it makes me wonder if certain items do give specific rewards or if that’s actually randomized. The other boosts were things like a sprint and a guide wisp that points out the person or area you need to reach to progress the story.
The other big thing that can happen in these dreams is something akin to a boss fight. You’ll see certain notable objects have a blue, translucent aura pop out of them, and you have to shoot orange weak spots until you’ve “calmed” down its aura, so that it can return to its original place. They’re never tough outside of maybe requiring more precise shooting or the object causes the environment to unfocus in front of you, but those are merely a means of delaying the inevitable. As a narrative-focused game, I didn’t expect any challenge because you’re just meant to keep progressing without anything being able to stop that. The shooting controls also work well enough for the sort of game that it is, despite the controls being a little flimsy at times when it feels either unresponsive or it is too eager to put the gun away while looking for things to shoot. It’s hard to describe how weird it gets.
The stories in Dreams of Another are solid, though nothing here is all that complex. You get a lot of writing about the art of creation and the characters in each of these storylines that go through their own troubles, but nothing here really moved me in any way. The best storyline here is the one about the Man in Pajama’s son trying to find a proper heir to keep his father’s legacy going, which takes a couple of interesting turns before the end of the game. I wouldn’t put this game’s story up there with the best in its genre, but it was enjoyable enough to deal with its disjointed presentation that breaks up any pacing it could have had.
There are no real problems with Dreams of Another, as it’s a perfectly fine game with some neat moments and fun visuals. I got really into just shooting up these environments to see them come into focus because it looks so good when everything comes together. The way the story is broken up into pieces as you have to keep hitting Start on the main menu to resume the campaign every few minutes is probably it’s biggest detriment that needed some other solution.
Baiyon has made another cool game that has just enough flaws to keep the average player at bay that isn’t bought into the concept based on the director’s pedigree alone. I would say that PixelJunk Eden is still his best work, but this may be his most interesting project of all, despite its flaws.
by Chris Selogy
