Spoilers ahead

Intent: 35% to the developer, 15% to the potential player, 50% to the player who has played it already and wants to hear another opinion. This is because the game is so short that, if you haven't played it already, you should play it now before reading because it is not a waste of time.

Game
Dreaming Mary is the kind of game that perplexes as well as wows you with its stellar graphics. You play as Mary, a young girl that can transport herself between the dream world and the real world. The dream world is a pink place full of cute objects and funny animal characters, with a slightly dark tinge to it. There are sparkling overlays and a boar with ill intent, which I will get to later. In the real world, however, it is a dreary, bloody, and overall terrifying place to live. There is blood on the walls, no happy radio to help her get through the sorrows, and a string of really cryptic books that describe things that I'm not willing to divulge. Suffice to say, the notion of the parallel between the dream world and the real world is real. Elements of the dream world correspond to that of the real world, in a light/dark dichotomy that personifies Mary's inner struggle to choose between "fake" peace and grim harsh reality. But the peaceful world may not be so peaceful after all...

Let's start with Graphics
The graphics are balls-amazing. Delicate art tinged with pink cuteness and a dark twisted thorn in its side. The soundscape is brilliantly constructed. You can play a radio, which plays several snippets of what I believe to be the developer's voice shouting through a distorted vocalizer about facts in the game, and questions that people have asked. It broke the fourth wall somewhat, but in a satisfactory way like reading the bio of a gamepage while you are playing.



Some stuff
There were some glitches that I felt were unnecessary, such as the radio still playing even when you transport from the dream world to the real world. The radio was a comforting force in the real world, a crutch that should have been kicked out from underneath me as I was thrust into a dark and dim reality. When the lights went off in the main room I was truly scared. Faces began to pop up and shit. It was terrifying.

Controls and stuff
When in the dream world, controls feel a little clunky. At first, the doors are closed, but then they all of a sudden open, and I wasn't sure what unlocked them in the first place. There's a lot of backtracking to be done, and not too much indication as to why I had to do it other than "help every friend that you see along your merry way". The characters indicated that Mary had been here in the dream world a while before, but perhaps a few years back, and they do not want her to leave. When she asks for the keys, they are worried about her, because they know that the reality she returns to is grim and dark. More on that later.



Let's get on to puzzles and gameplay
The puzzles, gameplay-wise, were a mixture of innovative and not-so-innovative. I didn't get the puzzle where you had to find the order of the statues, other than putting the man of contention in the middle, and two women that were facing certain ways on the other side... to people who can't compute general themes of "jealousy" into a timeline, or a landscape, or whatever the series of statues was trying to represent - it was a little difficult to order. I wasn't sure whether it was the timeline of one person, or whether the two statues on the left represented one girl, and the two statues on the right represented the other girl, and the middle represented the man. But basically I tried to use my common sense and got it in the end after maybe 5 tries. It wasn't that captivating.

Finding the colour of a book wasn't very captivating either. All you had to do was interact with everything around you and memorize a couple of names, and you're done. But luckily this is all very fun because the graphics are neat enough to just gawk at. The characters all seemed very happy for me to be there, but a little antagonistic in a way, because all they wanted Mary to do was do chores for her, and they didn't seem to care about Mary that much other than "never leave us". Perhaps that symbolized how friends can use you and not really see the pain that you go through. I'm reading too much into it (no pun intended).

There was the hidden girl game which was probably the most rudimentary (mechanics-wise) of all - but it was still fun. Then there were the puzzles second time round, where you had to give a petal if you got them wrong. It took me a few tries to get the ending that I wanted, but I got it in the end. Some things about the interface were fairly unintuitive, like having to speak to characters from the side, instead of pressing space while you were on top of them. Or entering certain doors that you didn't know were there. I don't tend to like games where you press space-bar on every little item, because it makes gaming just a series of repeating tasks over and over without thought. That didn't describe Dreaming Mary in full, but some parts it felt like progression was just in the order of interacting with the right objects in turn.



The game had very very subtle sexual themes that were touched on in another review. I tend to think that the possibility of rape being a theme in Dreaming Mary was well-actualized, and done savvily, because it was only alluded to in the way that Disney films allude to sexual themes - very slyly and going over the kids' heads. It didn't cheapen the experience for me, but it may be a turn-off for others. There are allusions to Mary and the Boar, and Adonis and other legends, but I wasn't really keeping up with all of it. Only if you read into it with a critical mind would you find the themes - I get the feeling most people would skim over it.

The end credits were beautiful, and you control the rate at which they scroll. The ending with the 4 keys is good. I do not want to spoil it, but I will say that this game is simple in story, but holds deep parallels.



Overall Judgement
Presentation: 8.5/10 -- Very polished art-wise, the controls could have been better. Felt a bit clunky at times, but otherwise slick.
Graphics: 10/10 -- Boom, baby. 10/10. Some of the best graphics I've seen in an RPG Maker game. Original, and highly artistic. The palettes were beautiful and the art amazing.
Sound: 8.5/10 -- Some amazing sound design. I particularly liked the groans behind doors, or the radio distortion.
Gameplay: 7/10 -- Could have been better. Some ideas were novel, but some others were just a case of interacting with the right square. I felt it could have been a bit more innovative in this area.
Lasting Appeal: 8/10 -- Unique in execution. Probably its strong point. It's just... different. Plus it's very short, so it doesn't really offend you by wasting your time.

Overall: 8.4/10 -- Left me with something outstanding to remember it by, and something to talk about. The graphics/sound were definitely noteworthy. There were a few niggles regarding gameplay and the nature of the game, but they're overshadowed by excellent qualities that cancel them out.