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Sweet dreams, sandman

  • Kylaila
  • 07/02/2014 03:36 PM
  • 1196 views
Sieastarena is a small game made for the Indie Game Maker contest. It can be beaten in about 10-20 minutes, depending on how well you fare.

You play as a wandering sandman, who loses his "nightmare fairies" which go straight into other peoples' dreams. Now you're stuck with getting them back, and you can only do that by visiting their dreams.

There are 4 dreams in total, which are all completely different style- and gameplay-wise.
We've got a restaurant minigame, an escape from a forest, mystery prison cells, and surviving something sci-fi lab-esque.

Contrary to what I expected, these dreams are nothing like nightmares. They are, by themselves, quite fun with an appropriate difficulty.
The battle-part was particularily interesting, although I only later discovered the ambush-option (luckily, really). Battle balancing is a huge issue throughout RPGs and seeing it done well in such a short game makes me quite happy. It might feel a little bit too difficult for some, though.

The music fits nicely, and does have a similiar line, so it won't appear randomly chosen (as it can happen when you have such different segments). They did not stick with me though, I can hardly remember even one track.
The graphics are a little bit muddy, but relatively unique.

While the dreams are quite fun by themselves, the game parts aren't connected at all until the ending clears it up. The visual styles, the gameplay is different, but themes and details are not bringing it together, either.
It is unfortunate that the themes of the dreams, which depend on the person's fear (like perfection in an restaurant) are in no way reflected upon in the dream other than in visuals. I realize it makes a little more sense looking back, but it is unfortunate that this adds to the disconnection of each part. There is barely any "flow" at all, although they are supposed to give a whole picture in the end. Even a short narrative would've helped a lot.

The ending itself is .. abrupt, out of the blue and needs you to get into a complete different line of thinking.
Show
You are a criminal. And the only indication to being a criminal is "a sandman who made a very big mistake" in your status-profile which you probably aren't reading anyway.
But I wonder, where does the arsonist come from? You utilize dreams, that is odd, seems forced, but makes sense in the game.
However, arsonist isn't remotely indicated. If the camp fire would be a clue, it could be made clearer, or at least more striking - by perhaps being able to interact with it, or having a huge one.


I actually liked the ending, as it gives the game a mutual line, but it would have made it great if you saw connections from the very beginning.

Siestarena is, all in all, a pretty little game which is certainly fun, but also very flawed when it comes to putting the pieces together.

Posts

Pages: 1
Darken
3952
07/04/2014 02:56 AM
I was going start with excuses on how it was a month project but your commentary made me realize there were a lot of "choices" i could have done differently that don't require experience or copious amounts of time.

Originally you were just going to be diving into peoples dreams, but I felt the need to make the story more interesting by having some sort of problem or dark secret. I also wanted to reward the player with something so I thought up the strangest ending I could think of on the spot. Unfortunately those ideas were thrown together and it shows. I wish I could pretend the arsonist and fireplace thing was linked but I didn't even think of that lol.

Thanks for the review.
Kylaila
I LOVE MEAT
13239
07/06/2014 06:09 PM
Glad you can take something from it.
The devil is in the details, but it's really hard to work on them when you have to do it all by yourself. Makes it way harder to think of or notice these details - if you were able to take some time off the project and look over it again, it certainly would've been easier.
I really enjoyed the game, though.
Pages: 1