• Add Review
  • Subscribe
  • Nominate
  • Submit Media
  • RSS

Cool and Calming Adventure

  • Seiromem
  • 12/30/2017 04:42 AM
  • 1286 views
Dreamaria is an adventure game where you interact with people and your surroundings in an attempt to progress.
You play as a gender-unspecified human who just can't seem to fall asleep. In their desperation for some shut-eye the main character, named Mora, seeks out the help of a sleep-study lab. Disregarding the potential danger of the apparently highly experimental treatment, Mora participates. After laying down on the test bed Mora falls asleep and is sent to the world of Dreamaria, where the game begins.

Now, I don't normally play pure adventure games, so I was pleasantly surprised by this game's relaxing tone and interesting story that kept me through all the demo had to offer.
Dreamaria looks and sounds amazing, and exploring around wasn't as much as a chore as I thought it might become. Things like "Mental Blocks" and "Inner Demons" block your path, and you must overcome them in order to look deeper into your own mind and solve your sleeping problem. However, in order to do this, you must travel to other worlds and solve the people's problems there.

The first world is a small, homely forest where a broken couple resides. You must do your best to try and reconcile these two lovers in order to progress further into your mind. This adventure mostly revolved around talking with people and solving a lost-woods-esque puzzle. Simple, really, as it's only the first level. The story was short and sweet, but some things I interacted with that I thought would be useful turned out to be completely irrelevant, which was disappointing.
On a bookcase in the main hub, I read a recipe that said "to reconcile two lovers, Sprinkle Nutmeg on their favorite record" the record I assumed was referring to the music box, but it didn't seem to have any relevance. I would have completed the story just fine even if I had never read that "potion recipe".


The second world is unfinished, but there is enough of it to where I think I can figure out where it's going. The setting is cool: an underwater kingdom of mermaids and fishmen having their annual festival, but the princess is missing! The set up for the puzzles looks good as there are plenty of objects to interact with that gives you plenty of details. I just hope that more of that juicy info is used to progress the story of that world and doesn't become useless info. Like, I hope that
the other potion recipe you read, "good luck on travels: dip a travel guide in holy water and perform a cross three times" is required before entering the portal of the dead, or else you'll have a bad crossing or something. Or Selina, the princess and daughter of the sea king and the apparent chronic screw-up, needs to perform this to prevent her bad-luck from affecting the ritual.



Either way, I think this demo holds a promising, cool, calm adventure game supported by interesting stories, great graphics and solid music choice.
If the game keeps this level of quality and has more unified level design, along with keeping consistent with current objects like the mental blocks and expands on inner demons, I think I'd gladly give it a 4/5.

Posts

Pages: 1
Thank you for the nice review! I'm glad you enjoyed it.
Re: your spoilers:
The potion recipes are just there for flavor, and also to hint at upcoming worlds. I didn't mean for players to take them for actual in-game hints. Maybe I should make a random selection of potions and spell recipes for that bit? It might make it clearer that it's just for fun.
Pages: 1