There’s something profoundly unsettling yet captivating about a game that refuses to play by the rules. ‘Dreams of Another’ isn’t just another indie title trying to make a statement—it’s a deliberate, almost aggressive rejection of conventional gaming logic. Imagine if someone took the dream sequences from your favorite narrative games and made them the entire experience, then stripped away any pretense of coherence. This isn’t a game that wants to be understood in the traditional sense; it wants to be felt, to linger in that strange space between consciousness and sleep where meaning forms and dissolves like morning mist.
What fascinates me most about this title is its paradoxical relationship with violence. Here we have a game where shooting is your primary interaction with the world, yet there’s no actual combat, no enemies to defeat, no traditional threat. You’re essentially shooting to see, to focus, to make sense of your surroundings. The act of firing a weapon becomes a creative rather than destructive force—a mechanic that turns the typical first-person shooter paradigm on its head. It’s as if the developers are asking us: what if our tools for destruction could become instruments of perception? What if the very act we associate with ending things could instead bring them into being?
The game’s structure mirrors the fragmented nature of dreams themselves. You’ll find yourself in an amusement park one moment, underwater the next, then suddenly back at the main menu as if waking from a particularly vivid dream. This constant disruption of expectation creates a unique rhythm that many players will find frustrating, but others will recognize as remarkably true to the experience of dreaming. Our minds don’t follow narrative logic when we sleep—they jump, they fade, they circle back, they transform. ‘Dreams of Another’ captures this quality with an authenticity that’s rare in gaming, even if that authenticity comes at the cost of traditional engagement.
There’s an interesting tension between the game’s artistic ambitions and its execution. The developers clearly have grand philosophical ideas about life, death, and human consciousness, yet the delivery often feels clumsy or underdeveloped. The flat voice acting and disjointed writing create a strange dissonance—like watching a profound idea struggle to find its proper expression. Yet somehow, this very imperfection adds to the game’s dreamlike quality. Dreams aren’t polished cinematic experiences; they’re messy, awkward, and sometimes embarrassingly literal in their symbolism. In its flaws, ‘Dreams of Another’ might be more honest about the nature of dreaming than more technically accomplished games.
Ultimately, ‘Dreams of Another’ feels like a conversation with gaming’s recent past—specifically that PS3 era when developers were aggressively exploring what games could be as an artistic medium. It carries the DNA of titles like Journey and Flow, but pushes further into abstraction and discomfort. This isn’t a game for everyone, and it certainly won’t satisfy those looking for clear answers or traditional gameplay satisfaction. But for players willing to embrace its peculiar rhythms and surrender to its fragmented logic, it offers something rare: a genuine attempt to translate the ineffable quality of dreams into interactive form. It reminds us that sometimes the most meaningful experiences aren’t the ones that make perfect sense, but the ones that linger in our minds long after we’ve put down the controller, leaving us to wonder what it all meant.
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