The Dream Machine

This is a great game, with a very imaginative, and gripping plot. I bought it ages ago, back when it was only available to play exclusively online, which was always very slow, and limited by the browser; also, the final chapter took forever to come out. But the now finished 6-chapter locally playable game as a whole is a completely revamped experience for an already amazing game. As soon as I saw this on GoG I re-bought the game immediately to add it to my collection. The GoG version plays fast, smoothly and beautifully. For linux users, I'd also just add that the game runs flawlessly on 64-bit Wine 3.19 (I had problems with 4.4 though, so ymmv). It's a shame GoG hasn't bothered to create an official wine-based installer for linux, but, oh well, I'm sure someone will create a PlayOnLinux script soon enough.

If this was a review of the first 2 chapters of the game, I would’ve been hopeful. “So much potential”, I’d write, “such an interesting premise!” But the full game is an utter mess that gets more tedious and boring to play the further it goes. First two chapters establish the premise of a strange horror mystery dream thriller sci-fi tale with not particularly good writing, but one that fits the mood and stop motion looks. But starting with chapter 3 things start falling apart. Game enforces more tedious walking back and forth, asks for obscure puzzle solutions and doesn’t present a particularly interesting story. Which gets a bit better in chapter 4, but then takes a nose dive and culminates with the ending chapter being just a pointless pseudo-“smart” self-discovery sequences, scene borrowed from Kubrick and an ending quote from Radiohead. It’s not a particularly fun adventure game, with really tedious “puzzles” starting in the last chapters. It’s not a good story, because the storyline falls apart somewhere after midpoint and it’s not particularly well written. And it’s very definitely not worth time it requires to suffer through it all.

Do you know anyone who says that point n'click adventures aren't what they were used to, and mourns daily the demise of Sierra and Lucasarts? Maybe that person is you. The Dream Machine is a game who can stand shoulder to shoulder with the classics of the golden days, and as far as i'm concerned is the best game of the point n'click revival of some years ago. One thing this game has better that the competition is the graphics. Seriously, look at them. They are made with clay and miniatures (you can sheck the process on the developers blog), and are amazing. As for the rest, the puzzles are very good, and the difficulty is spot on, although this is something that may vary between people. It's easier than most of the classics. The story is fantastic, but i wouldn't want to spoil anything, because there are so many great twists. Just play this game, it was made with obviously lots of love, and it really shows.

I was surprised how good this game was! Been looking for a nice puzzle game latley and this was it. Great atmosphere and story, which gets really crazy. Was much longer than I first thought and was pleasantly surprised by that. Had some small flaws with crashes but nothing too major. Noticeable how much time and effort was put into the art.