As the 2019 Misaos Awards begin to come full circle with its large list of nominations and the separation of the contenders and the pre-tend-ers finally beginning to take shape, it’s once again that special time of year when everyone’s frantically scrambling around to get their votes casted in time for their favorite games (or not) before the voting period happens to close and everyone’s just stuck there looking like a bunch of loons afterwards. The good news is that we still have another month left to go before the polls happen to close. The bad news is that, judging by the large numbers of games that are eligible to be nominated this year without a review as of yet, *sigh* I’m afraid that not everyone’s going to get their time to shine in time, and that really sucks…!

But luckily, thanks to the RMN: Review Misao Nominate Event (try saying that three times fast) that’s been going on since the beginning of November, a few of those games, luckily enough, submitted without a review that no one’s ever heard of before (or probably haven’t played as of yet) will FINALLY get their chance to shine in the sun, and maybe…just maybe one of those fancy new reviews just might be the ticket to someone’s new shiny, virtual trophy…(or not).

That’s one of the unfortunate downsides that I’ve noticed throughout the last couple of years about having too many games on here to play every year. While it’s great to have more options and all for everyone to enjoy, unfortunately, we have far too few participants playing and reviewing games around here these days and a lot more of them rather just making games instead, which causes a lot of games submitted on here to be left in the dust, I’m afraid. I mean, eventually some of those games do get their time to shine after a little while, but it could took takes them months - or even years before that eventually happens. That’s why I hoping that a review event, like the RMN: Review Misao Nominate Event, becomes more of a norm for future years to come around this time…

Anyways…enough doom and gloom. It’s time to get down to business! *cracks knuckles*

So for my “only” submitted review for this entire event (bite me), I had a couple of choices that I could have taken the plunge with, but I finally decided on this juicy piece of meat in Dream Of Gluttony, made by UminoAoi with custom music created by Nemi… I…have no idea who any of those people are, but UminoAoi has had an account on RMN here since around 2013, so…whatevers, I guess he or she is cool enough to get reviewed by the big dog.

I actually ended up choosing to play and review this game overall because, number one, the CSS for this gamepage looks really good and, secondly, because it doesn’t have that many comments on its gamepage despite coming out initially around since 2018, which is a bit of a shame, actually. And I also recently found out that this game has a bit of a cult following outside of RMN, so maybe it’s us that are the ones who are really missing out.

Anyways, I’m seriously getting a lot of Dreaming Mary type of vibes with this one just by looking at it, And, if judging by that game is any indication of how this game will probably fare - then I’m in for a real treat!

The Story



Our story begins with Sissy (yes, lol, that really is her name) as she’s looking for a way back home trying to catch the next train back into town, but she happens to get lost along the way in this creepy-like forest where she eventually bumps into some people at a campfire who then gives her directions of where to go to next. After a bit of a long walk through the woods, she eventually stumbles upon a place called “Food Town,” (where Ocean would LOVE to live in) where everyone there is really nice and friendly (if not a little bit weird) and all of the denizens of this place are named after some sort of food, like Bread, Butter and Milk.

(If I had a food name, I want to be known as Macadamia Nuts.)

Anyways... Eventually, Sissy meets up with a strange looking guy (and I do mean strange) named Dumpling who could can only communicate with her by writing down various messages on a sign...(or it looks like, from the animation that’s used in-game, that he just pulls out a new sign for every occasion that he wants to say.) (How does he do that so bloody quickly???) Despite his strange, werid antics, he offers to take Sissy to the train station free of charge, but not before stopping by and meeting up with some of the townspeople along the way. (Great...there’s always a catch…)

As Sissy meets with all of the different inhabitants in town and performs various tasks for them (I call it slave labor), something…doesn’t quite seem right about these people and this entire town… Even Sissy starts to feel rather strange herself the more food that she happens to eat from these people. She eventually reaches her final destination in due time, but starts feeling more and more hungry along the way to the point of feeling borderline psychotic, like the food was laced with something in it, as everything then around her starts to show their true colors of what this place REALLY is (and it’s HELLLL). She eventually runs into this a sinister-looking temptress named Chili by the bridge who, after a little brief discussion with her, begins to start eating Sissy.



(Well…damn... I’ll admit, I didn’t see that one coming, Jesus…)

And then, well…the game just kind of ends from there, right…? Right…???



Okay.

After the credit sequence is done, you’ll then be teleported into a sort of…afterlife type of place where Sissy can then talk to everyone that she’s met along the way on her journey (and you can even listen to some of the game’s soundtrack from here too as a nice little bonus)! After saying all of your goodbyes, the only place left to go to from here is to continue going right, where, after a brief sequence, the entire game almost looks like it starts all over again from the very beginning. Heck, even the same exact scene with the people that Sissy meets at the campfire site in the forest starts to begin to play all over again with the same sort of dialogue as well. (What the heck…? Is that it???)

That’s what I thought initially; the game was over, that was it. Without knowing about what happens afterwards, I decided to keep on going to see if anything had changed the second time around, and, for a little while there, everything seemed to play out exactly the same until I started noticing that some of the dialogue sequences started to change a bit the second time around, that, holy shit – this game had a second whole playthrough in it! Praise the gods!!!

I don’t really wanna spoil what happens in the second playthrough, but, I must say, you’ll definitely get the most out of this story as it later goes into Sissy’s past and the truth about these people, who they really are, and the town itself. It’s definitely the best part of the game for sure. If anything, I really, really enjoyed the story in this one…so much so that I still have a lot of lingering questions that I would love to know: Like, is Sissy stuck in an endless time loop that no matter what she does or says each time around that she’s doomed to spend an eternity in this hellish place? What exactly is up with this Dreamy Rose character? Is that supposed to be Chili??? (because they’re both the only ones in this game that have tails) Did she dream this whole thing up? And the most important question of them all: can you actually wait for Dumpling to come out of Cinnamon’s house during the first playthrough? Because I tried waiting around, walking back and forth, selecting the wait option for around 10 minutes or so to no such luck, waiting for his stupid ass to come out of that door, but, lol, I guess not... You know you have a compelling story on your hands when the player wants to find out a lot more, even after the game is all said and done, and I absolutely would love to see and learn more about these characters, whether it be a sequel, a prequel that goes into the lives of these townspeople, what they were really like before they ended up in Food Town in a future follow-up. Even if we don’t get another game, I would just love to just see this continue on in a manga or something.

I did notice the odd typo here or there, especially the one part when Sissy is having the tea time battle with Milk during the first playthrough that if she happens to lose to him it just says, rather humorously, “Sissy LOOSE’S” instead of “Sissy loses,” lol. In some ways, I kind of like it. It can be its own kind of thing, like “All your base belong to us” or something.

I also don’t really like the heart shaped symbol used when Sissy or other characters that are on screen are talking to themselves out loud, as using brackets, or another font iteration, like italics, probably would have made a lot more sense and would be much easier for the player to distinguish between the two types of narratives here, as it was a bit difficult to tell at first what the heck that heart symbol meant, because I remember one part at the beginning of the game when Sissy blurted out something like, “These people are sure weird,” and because of that heart symbol it was like she was talking to them aloud instead of just talking inside her head. I was like, “What, lol!? What are you trying to do there, women, lol!?” There’s also this message that keeps popping up of Dumpling joining you all the time that keeps repeating itself every time that there’s a scene whenever he’s talking to someone, even though that he never actually technically leaves Sissy until the very end of the game. I can see the first time that he joins, but not every other time afterwards when he’s still there!

The Gameplay



Dream Of Gluttony’s gameplay is basically a collection of twelve whole mini-games, with six on each playthrough, with some very minor overworld exploration and some visual novel aspects to boot. You can only move left to right with no deviation off the beaten path. And if you try to go back to a previous area, you won’t be able to do it, as Sissy will then remind the player that she simply “cannot go back”. (To be fair - would you in this town???) You can’t even interact with objects that you see on screen unless you happen to bump into them on collision that cues a prescripted event that only triggers once. So you see that shiny apple on the tree that you wanna pick up? Nope, can’t do it. You wanna ride that bicycle next to Bread and Butter’s house? Too bad! You wanna go into Dumpling house and raid his fridge and his cabinets? Pfft, I wish!

I understand the limitations but it would have been nice to be able to interact with some of the objects on the maps, like being able to talk to people again a second time after a cutscene, going back to a previous map again (some, not all), being able to try the mini-games again during the first playthrough...it just seems like you’re just going through the basic motions here from one area to the next with very little in-between, as it’s a bit disappointing that there isn’t that much else to do here.

However, the bread and butter of this game (I’m not sorry) is definitely in its mini-games, as pretty much every person that you visit in town will have a mini-game for you to play and try to complete. During the first playthrough, it’s not required to beat these mini-games in order to proceed forward, but doing so will give you a nice looking CG picture (that you can also see in the game’s ending as well) and a little extra dialogue sequence - which I think is kind of worth trying to complete them in succession. The second playthrough’s mini-games (some, not all) will give you the option of selecting either an easier or a normal-like difficulty and now you ABSOLUTELY have to complete it this time around, otherwise Sissy ain’t going to be walking straight for a LONNNG time.

Either way, here’s the entire list:

Bread And Butter’s Maze Game
This is kind of cool, I really like this one, despite the fact that it’s only one set maze with the same ingredient placements each time that you play it. The object of this one is to collect all the ingredients in the maze within the time limit - which is pretty generous, BTW. The twist is that you cannot go back the same exact way that you just came in or walked passed, so you’re going to have a think a little bit about where to go. The first time that I did this I thought I beat it and collected everything until I noticed the apple next to the timer in the upper right hand corner that I forgot to pick up. (Fuuuuu…!!!)

Candy’s Memorization Game
This one’s a bit tricky due to the patterns of the candies that are on the playfield, as a lot of them look very similar to one another, and it makes it a bit confusing if this one is the right one over this one. The good news is that each segment is exactly the same on each playthrough, so you’ll eventually figure this one out after a couple of tries. The time limit is a bit more strict here than in the previous mini-game, but I was able to beat it after a couple of trials and errors.

Tomato’s “Let’s Make Some Tomato Sauce” Game
This one’s good, as it reminds me a lot of that one old PC Mac Game that I used to play back in the day called Spelling Blizzard where you had to feed a bunch of hungry animals in order to cross rivers and such by throwing a bunch of mackerel at them. I’m not sure why UminoAoi decided to have the A key be the one that throws the rocks at Tomato (yes, you are throwing rocks at this guy in order to make some Tomato Sauce, don’t ask), as it should be the confirm key (Z or Space) to do it, but whatevers. Either way, this is a pretty fun mini-game, even though that this guy can be a bit of a pain to hit. After throwing a rock, you won’t be able to throw another one again until the rock either hits Tomato or goes all the way to the other side of the map, so you can’t just spam the throwing button like mad that I tried to do.

Strawberry And Grape’s: Worm Whacking Game
This game’s like whack-a-mole, as you have to kill all the worms that are invading the garden patch in order to win. The most annoying part about this game is the tileset passability errors on some of the plants, as areas that you think that you just simply run around in and get around will have you just simply stuck there in place with you scratching your head about why is that even is a thing. The time limit is also pretty stingy this time around, as I managed to beat it with just one life remaining and with just about 1 second left on the clock; it was a very close shave. (But, to be fair, it was on my very first try, so I probably could have done it a bit faster with repeated playthroughs.)

Milk’s Epic Tea Time Battle
Well, this wasn’t what I was expecting at all - an actual RPG battle!? Yeah, it’s an actual battle but with a charming twist added to the mix. Instead of beating the hell out of each other with fisticuffs and such, both Sissy and Milk are trying to show one another who has the best table manners at the table when it comes to being a gracious host. You basically select from a large list of skills, such as, “Asking For Sugar,” “Saying ‘Thank You,’” and even using your kitchen utensils at the right time in order to damage Milk. Milk can do the exact same thing to you too with the same exact skill setup that Sissy has. How much damage one skill does over the other, I-I have no idea, as precise damage to the opponent is never specifically specified on screen, but if you use a collection of these skills in a certain order and avoid using the bad ones, like “Chewing With Your Mouth Open,” then you should be eventually victorious over this douchebag. You will eventually need to occasionally use the Guard command in order to restore your lost HP at certain times, as that’s the only way to recover in this fight.

(Also, FYI, there’s a bit of strange graphical glitch in which when Milk uses certain commands that Sissy can also do that it plays the same animation when he’s attacking Sissy as Sissy herself. It’s a bit weird.)

Cinnamon Spice (Gathering Mini-Game)
This one’s REALLY easy, especially if you take the time to either screencap the recipe guide and just save it somewhere and occasion look at it when you need to look at it or just write it down manually, otherwise - I hope you have a good memory! Either way, you just basically have to find the right spices on the rack and choose the right amount of ounces to put in Cinnamon’s dish or you’re taking a hit. I don’t like it when the recipe guide is displayed at the beginning of each round that you basically have wait until the time limit ends in order to proceed on with the game, as I should be able to just skip this part by just simply pressing the confirm key (Z or Space). You should also be able to just look up the recipe guide again by simply selecting it off a shelf or something in case you can’t remember.

Run Away Dumpling
The crazed silent manic is now after Sissy and it’s now up to her to get fully away from this sign-wielding psycho. You basically have to run away from Dumpling while holding the SHIFT key (unless you’re playing on easy mode) while getting up to the edge of each platform, stop, and then press the SPACE key in order to jump on to the next platform (again, why not just use the Z or confirm key in order to jump???) If you get too close to the edge without jumping, you’ll fall into the crevasse below and get an instant Game Over. If Dumpling manages to catch Sissy, it’s also a Game Over.

I do appreciate the option of allowing the player to pick between an easier setting and the normal setting to choose from, but on easy mode - this guy is a complete joke! I managed to get to the end with no problems and got so far ahead of Dumpling that I decided to stick around for a while and see how long it would take for his slow ass to get to where I was and I must have waited for around 50 seconds before finally realizing that…he ain’t coming back… I don’t know what the hell happened to him, if he got stuck somewhere on a jump, or he just decided to just give up because Sissy’s too damn fast for him, but on normal mode this guy is relentless.

Metal Gear Tomato: Tactical Sissy
I must say, I’m rather impressed with this guy’s overall shooting capabilities, as he’s able to hit Sissy from pretty much any angle and almost any distance with one single shot. Wow…

This one’s a bit of a stealth mission, as you’re trying to get through all of these colored boxes and crates without stepping on anything, like the broken shards of glass, or getting too close to Tomato or pushing one of the colored boxes that might alert him to your presence. You can hold the SHIFT key to run and press the SPACE bar to jump over one of the colored boxes. You can’t jump over every box, but only certain particular ones. It’s a bit of a trial and error sort of thing, but it should be a bit obvious where you can jump and where you cannot after a little while.

On easy mode, the only thing that changes is that you have a 60 second time limit instead of the normal mode’s 30. But even on normal mode, you’ll eventually get through this one…(after probably dying a couple of times).

Flee The Worms
It’s another one of those chase and run type of mini-games, similar to the run away from Dumpling one, where Sissy needs to hightail it out of dodge through a spooky graveyard using the SHIFT key to run from a couple of giant, hungry worms as you try to make it all the way to the other side of the screen without being caught. You can also press the A key to fire some sort of a projectile (that I think is a pesticide) at the worms, but it’s really not that effective, especially on normal difficulty; it’s just best to just hold the SHIFT key down while running like the wind. On easy mode, these guys put up ABSOLUTELY no challenge, as their running speed is now of that of the normal walking speed in RPG Maker while Sissy can still hightail with no issues.

I died a couple of times on normal difficulty; I even had a couple of heartbreaking moments where’d I be just right at the end of the level before those f*ckers managed to get me at the last moment. One of the major challenges about this game is that, similar to the Strawberry and Grape: Worm Whacking Game, that some of the tombstones have tile passability errors where you think you could just slide on through them with no problems at all only for you to get stuck there and then it’s worm feasting season for the worms, so that was a bit annoying. Also, after you reach a certain point, the worms will all teleport close to each other again, so even though that you think that you’re far away from these guys, they’ll just happen to get back into positon that’s right back on your tail.

(Oh, and one other thing to note: just before you’re about to play this mini-game, when Sissy walking through the graveyard after talking with Strawberry and Grape, her walking speed is INCREDDDDIBLLLLY slow that takes like three whole minutes to get through this place. I get that she’s tired and all that, but why can’t she just have the same exact walking speed that she did when she’s about to meet Chili in the final portion of the first playthrough; at least that was a f**k ton faster than this.

Cooking With Sissy
Despite the monotony of this one, it’s an interesting take on Sissy’s past when she was a cook and had her own restaurant and dealing with not with the hectic work life of running a restaurant, but also feeling underappreciated for her passion and skills. I feel for her. She gets like no compliments or praise for anything that she does around here. Heck, even if the chef that she’s hired to help her out doesn’t really give a shit.

This game may be a bit overwhelming at first, especially with the message before the mini-game begins that you need to keep calm and get those dishes out fast – “OR ELSE” – similar to the other mini-games during the second playthrough that sees you getting a Game Over if you fail, but, in all actuality – you can take as much time as you want! Yeah., there’s no penalty for taking as much time as you need, other than the waiter constantly giving you shit for taking so long. But yeah, take as much time as you need and don’t worry about anything else.

If you’ve never worked in the kitchen before (like I haven’t), and aren’t too keen about cooking yourself, don’t worry; as long as you examine every counter that has a bar above it, you’ll eventually get past this one. You’ll even after some time start to remember that this is where the vegetable counter is…here’s where you get the meat…here’s where the mixer…and so on and so, so it gets a bit more easier with time.

After you cook a couple of prescripted dishes, the game will end and you’ll then get to move on to the next part.

Here’s…Cinnamon!
This one’s incredibly easy, especially if you know the trick that the location of the axe is in the SAME. EXACT. SPOT. EVERY. F**KING. TIME!!! I mean…whhhyyy!? Why didn’t UminoAoi program some of these games, especially this one, in order to add some more variety to them to have the axe generate in a random cabinet every playthrough!? It’s just dumb to know that it’s in the same exact place every time.

Either way, all you have to do is grab the axe and get out of Cinnamon’s workshop before he happens to catch you. If he happens to get too close, you can just hide in one of the other cabinets that aren’t sparkling to avoid getting caught. And whatever you do - don’t go hiding when you’ve acquired the axe, as Cinnamon will find you no problems. If anything, I don’t even think it’s even required to hide at all, as, as long as you keep your distance, you’ll be fine.

The Final Battle Against Chili
It’s another RPG-styled battle against Chili this time around, as Sissy has had just about enough of this crap and just wants to go home, finally! Similar to most of the second playthrough mini-games, you can choose the difficulty of this one as well, as on easy mode, she’s incredibly easy and will go down after a couple of strikes, compared to normal mode where it will take you a lot longer.

All you got to do in this one is select one of Sissy’s many skills and just rip Chili to shreds before she happens to rip you into shreds. Again, how much damage each skill does is never specifically specified on screen, but just try them all in a random order and you’ll eventually win this fight. However, do keep an eye on your overall HP because the only way to heal in this fight is to use the skill, “Don’t Give Up,” but it has a bit of a tendency to fail at times, so try to use it when your HP is below around 30% to avoid getting unlucky and dying to this RNG bu***hit.

And…well - that’s it. (Well, besides the soundtest that you can access during the post-credits sequence.)

I do like that there’s quite a variety of different mini-games to play here, but since a lot of them only have one set pattern and / or placement to them, like Bread and Butter’s Maze game will always be the same, the candies that you need to pick out from Candy’s Memorization game will always be the same, the dishes that you need to cook in Cooking With Sissy will all be the same, there’s not much replay value in a lot of them because nothing ever changes from one playthrough to the next. I get that some of the mini-games here couldn’t really be changed that much, but a great portion of these would have been great if they had a bit more randomness to them, as I feel that was a bit of a missed opportunity here.

I also would have really liked a mini-game mode where you could freely play these mini-games whenever you wanted, like something that should have been implemented in as a bonus for finishing and completing both playthroughs, maybe after 100% everything. Heck, throw in a CG collection for all the custom artwork that you see throughout the game and its endings, and you got yourself a nice little bonus.

The Soundtrack



(Hey, we got ourselves a custom soundtrack here!) Nemi was the one who composed all of the game’s custom music and – I gotta say – she did a very splendid job here. With the exception of a few songs that I didn’t really like listening to (“Candydark,” for instance, hurts my ears and sounds like something like two monkeys banging on windchimes at random), and some of the songs not looping quite properly, but most of the music here fit the game’s creepy-like atmosphere and whimsical nature that it does the game more than enough justice. Some of my favorite songs are probably “Bonus Bad,” the song that plays during the second playthrough’s post credits sequence, because of its creepy, ominous nature that I much prefer it over its other variant (which is still pretty good!); “Chili’s Theme,” because I love that sinister sounding organ piece that plays in the background which is perfect for a sinister-looking temptress like Chili; “Dreambell,” the game’s main title theme, which has a nice soothing musicbox-like sound to it that it reminds me a lot like Final Fantasy 8’s Laguna flashback theme during the beginning of the second disc; “Forest,” because of that cool native American sounding flute; “Minigames,” because I get a bit of a Buster Busts Loose sort of vibe from it and it’s perfect for a nice, relaxing calming mini-game; and, finally, “Pomidor1,” which I believe plays during the segment when you’re in the Vegetable District, that’s quite upbeat and is definitely one of the better town themes in the game. There are a lot of other ones that are also quite good as well that I didn’t list here, but those are some of my personal favs.

I’m also a bit surprised, since the title page changes whenever you happen to reach a certain point in the game, that the music doesn’t change to a more sinister sounding song to fit the mood with it, since there’s a couple of songs here that would have fit the bill quite nicely. It’s just weird to have the title page look so forlorn and dark and not take any advantage of that with the music here as well. Instead, it just has “Dreambell” playing again regardless. Whatever, I guess. Maybe they couldn’t decide on what fit best.

The sound effects are also used quite well here. I really like the echo-like sound effect for the menus when you happen to confirm something, and whenever any text happens to show up it sounds like a woodpecker pecking on some wood. There’s even the sound of footsteps whenever you happen to run or walk across something, and it’s put to pretty good use during the second playthrough when you go into Bread and Butter’s house with the music and everything cuts off. All in all, a fabulous effort!

The Aesthetics



Dream Of Gluttony uses all custom art assets - and it looks absolutely gooood! I was originally put off a bit at first with the overworld graphics and how when Sissy, or any character, that’s walking or running uses a two frame animation - which looks really weird - but after a while I got used to it, and maybe that was just part of the cutesy, chibi-like design of the characters that the author was going for. (But, what’s up with those big heads, anyway???) The character portraits are also REALLY good too, and every time that they would make a funny or a psychotic-like expression on their face, I kept thinking back to Caz’s and Marimo’s game from a few years back that I reviewed, Tirawrmisu, and it just reminded me so much of that game. Even the custom CG art that you get after completing certain mini-games or during certain events look really good too. You can definitely tell that a lot of work and care was put into the visuals and the style for this game, and I for one think it looks great.

There’s the odd graphical oddity that here or there, such as when you press the UP key on the overworld, since there’s no looking up sprite for Sissy, she’ll usually will just look left instead of it being based on where you’re positioned on the map and it’s a bit weird… I already talked about the tea time battle animation issue with Milk earlier and how his battle animations are the same exact ones that Sissy uses herself. And, for the run away from Dumpling mini-game, the lights used in the background have this squared-border around it that looks like it was just taken from somewhere without it being properly edited to match the backdrop which actually looks quite funny when you’re trying to run away from this guy... Most of these issues here aren’t too bad because of the creepy, surreal-like nature of the game, but I found them a bit noticeable while playing.

The End Result



I can’t believe that I stumbled upon yet ANOTHER hidden gem! (And this was just the only game that I reviewed for the event.) What initially started off as all cutesy and happy with some interesting mini-games thrown in for good measure slowly turned into something a lot more creepier and sinister towards the end that I wasn’t really quite expecting - and thank god that I decided to keep on going after finishing the game the first time - because the second playthrough is easily the best out of the two. Make sure that if you’re going in to experience this game to finish BOTH playthroughs, okay? Even though that for the first couple of minutes that everything may look and feel the exact same as before - don’t let that fool you and make sure that you stay with it until the very, very end, got it?

I would definitely love to see this story continue on in a future release someday, considering I believe that it’s the best part about this whole game, whether it’s a sequel, prequel – or whatever – I would just love to see more of this world and all of its kooky characters. While I do wish that there was a bit more to the exploration side of the game and that some of the mini-games here had a bit more variety in its level placement and setting, the overall package is fine enough as it, and this is definitely one game to check out, and hopefully, maybe, this review will get others to check it out too.



OVERALL GRADE:
4.5 / 5 - B+ ~ Outstanding. Truly Outstanding.