So, today I beat
Art's Dream which is technically just a game inside of
Dreams made using Dreams. I wasn't sure if that one is even worth listing but it's basically all the actual official gameplay content of Dreams and it was literally advertised and is still popularly referred to as Dreams' "story mode". Anyway, ultimately it's something between a tech demo, showcase and the video game equivalent of a short film. The whole point is that theoretically anyone could make this game using Dreams - I say "theoretically" because obviously this was made by a large team of very talented professionals and I doubt that any user creation will ever get close to it in terms of scale and quality.
Anyhow, the result feels like the kind of game that Double Fine would make with a hint of Media Molecule's own magic.
It's actually a very artsy thing that tells the story of a depressed jazz musician who somehow processes his guilt through "dreams" that you experience in the form of different games. I'd say it's a not so subtle attempt to demonstrate the wide range of things that can be made in Dreams. You get a simple point & click adventure, some 3D platforming, a shmup and even something that kinda resembles Space Harrier.
Now, honestly, I don't think that it's a particularly impressive game on its own. As an artistic project it IMO suffers heavily from form over substance - it's one of those things that try very hard to look and sound like an artistic masterpiece but are ultimately quite banal, like an art student's amateur short film. Likewise, at no point is the gameplay actually good. The platforming sequences aren't good platformers, the adventure part isn't a good adventure game, the shmup part is in fact terrible. On one hand I get it, this is just a showcase and making it a "good" game could make it a worse demo (e.g. by becoming too challenging or too long) - on the other hand it kinda sucks that the very talented people at Media Molecule didn't aim higher for Art's Dream in particular. At times you can totally feel that this was made by the same studio as Tearaway (which I incidentally finished last year and absolutely loved) but it's simply not even remotely as good.
But there's still a ton to like here. The production value of this thing is in fact mind blowing. Not only does Art's Dream often look jaw-droppingly beautiful and pull off amazing visual effects, it also has excellent voice acting and an amazing soundtrack that even includes some musical numbers that genuinely made me laugh. This
was made in Dreams and has this plasticky minimalistic look but the art direction is amazing and it's just a joy to look at. It's really just held back by being a demo of sorts.
Anyway, I had heard some opinions that Art's Dream makes Dreams worth buying on its own which is IMO categorically false, if only because it provides only about two hours of content. But it's totally worth checking out if only to see what Dreams is capable of and seems like a good point to start one's Dreams adventure.
Anyhow,
here's a full walkthrough.
And
here's the soundtrack.
I may not be a big fan of Art's Dream but I will definitely listen to its soundtrack a lot.