Dreamscaper is an ARPG Rogue-light mixing component from brawlers, prison crawlers, and top-down shooters. Each sleep is an alternate prison in an ever-changing world with a large number of one of a kind occasions and difficulties. Playing as Cassidy, diving into her subconscious, and taking off the surreal nightmares. She wrestles with them to save her from a dark fate.
Based on the board game, the developers created a new game where every slumber is a different random dungeon, and you must unlock the power of your dreams to see a new day. The gameplay is about a young girl Cassidy who is trapped in a deep depression. The task is to jump into her psyche to take on the dreamlike bad dreams she grapples with. The gameplay is fun, deeply repayable, and has emotional resonance.
Let’s start with the game tutorials. You can play the tutorial at the very beginning and even in any part of the game. Even though the tutorial is not informative enough, and it should have been more explaining how to use different abilities and should have been given more emphasis on the control to be used further in the game. Currently, the tutorial is just showing the very basic movements and usage of the primary weapon.
Now moving ahead to the game, overall, the first look was very dark in my opinion, Cassidy’s apartment is the player’s home base, a reprieve from the intensity of the dreams and space to dive deeper into the narrative. As progress and as Cassidy’s character grows, this space evolves with them. There are three sections where the player can see the tasks walking toward the desk, sleep in the bed to play the game, and leave out to meet new people. This makes the game multi-level, where interconnected in both gameplay and storytelling at the same place.
Experience through frequenting dreams to find insider facts, vanquish bad dreams, and redesign your apparatus all while revealing Cassidy’s story. Battle nightmares and make the rush of perm death your ally as a multitude of surreal items and an ever-changing world. We will explore both the waking and dreaming worlds, where our actions at one will affect the other. In the Story section, the task is to meet new people and empower her with their hopes and memories to dispel the darkness of her nightmares. The more you’ll learn about Cassidy and her story, the further you make it into her dreams. Further, it also helps to empower the more powerful weapons which in turn help in her dream to fight the nightmares. Winning from a nightmare allows her to see the dawn.
Alongside, moving from one place to another and exploring let find keys to open doors. There are piles of stones which have hidden items in it. Some could be easily broken with swords and some need bomb to be destroyed. There you will find health, arrow, bomb and some more abilities. They are also found by killing ghosts of different levels.
The dream has three different bases named Hometown, City, and Campground. As you move ahead through the game, you’ll face different challenge rooms, puzzle rooms, empowering shrines, restorative ruins, story vignettes, merchants, and the most fascinating challenging bosses. You surely need enough power to face these which bring the need for weapons and gears to give you the edge you need to take on Cassidy’s nightmares. Special modifiers and rare items add depth and variety as you plunder through the dreams, allowing you to create unique character build that encourages strong synergies. As the level goes up, Sand and Glass are gathered to unlock upgrades, purchase new weapons, items, and more. Challenging deadly shades and bosses will push Cassidy’s skills to the limit as you learn their patterns and unravel the mystery.
Each shade speaks to an alternate feeling that Cassidy is battling with. From anger to anxiety to hopelessness. Each boss in Dreamscaper is a portrayal of one of Cassidy’s most negative feelings that she battles with all through the game. Supervisors have feeling subordinate looks as well as one of a kind assault designs that are likewise molded after these sentiments. On the other hand, you also need to meet new people to make new friends at bars, parks, gyms and more in Redheaven.
Keeping other things aside, now let me talk about the Audio and Video features of the game. There is not much to say as there are very few conversations only in the storyline. The main action segment of the game consists of different sound effects and soft melody music. When I first played the game, honestly, I didn’t like the buffers in the animation and the dark game interface. But I am personally happy after they fixed that and upgraded their quality of animation, run speed, and attack motions.
In the end, I cannot say I loved the game, but it surely entertained me quite a lot. I had to spend a relatively long time to eliminate the first boss due to lack of proper instruction. Moving forward, the game needs a lot of changes which assumed are already taking place as it can be seen that the past few updates have fixed a lot in the interface. Afterburner studio did one thing, what is to be appreciated, the players are given a chance to experience exclusive Cassidy’s skin, exclusive weapon skin, and retro model. Overall, the gameplay was good, and the map was quite simple and easy to use. I loved the teleport facility from the map. Shops need to be searched which is quite annoying. Lastly, the game cannot be saved at any other point until the level is done after killing the boss. Losing a life in the boss round will put awake you and therefore the level needs to be started back again.