Preview | Dreamscaper

Dreamscaper captures a feeling I love: going for a walk to get some coffee on a crisp Autumn morning; getting caught in a light drizzle right before it gets dark out on your way home; cold rain fogging up your warm bedroom’s window. It’s a hard thing to do, but this rogue-lite action RPG does it exceedingly well.

I was skeptical when I first looked into Dreamscaper, after all "indie rogue-like with a minimalist artstyle" is pretty well worn fair but after a handful of hours with the Early Access version of the game, I can see it is brimming with potential.

In Dreamscaper you play a young woman, Cassidy, who has moved to a new town. However, when she sleeps she finds herself in a world of memories and monsters, a dreamscape. She’s not unarmed, though, as she travels deeper into her thoughts you’ll find weapons both ranged and melee based and abilities from lightning dashes to big ol’ shadow hands, to fight back. 

From a gameplay stance, this isn’t much you haven’t seen before; each level of her dreamscape is made up of separate rooms, most filled with enemies, some with puzzles, one shop on each floor, and one room that either recovers your health or your special ability’s charge. You have a melee weapon with a light and heavy attack, a  ranged weapon that consumes ammo, two abilities on cooldown, and a third special ability that recharges as you kill enemies (and you keep forgetting to use). On top of this each level of your dream has a room denoted as the end of the floor, where you either fight a boss or go up against a large group of particularly tough enemies.

But what makes Dreamscaper standout is the presentation. Not only is the artstyle beautiful, with conservatively textured characters akin to 2018’s Ashen, but levels are these incredibly ethereal representations of your character's past. Without spoiling too much (as it's fun to discover the setting of each for yourself as you reach deeper into your dreams), the first floor is based around Cassidy’s childhood town; you start at what appears to be her childhood house and each enemy encounter takes place on a wood’s clearing, while upgrades for your run are found just outside quaint diners. However, there is still something dreamlike to this location, beyond the monsters, some impossible architecture and hexagonal rock formations sprouting from nowhere. As you warp between rooms what lays behind you quickly evaporates and the next area forms in front of your very eyes like watercolours hitting paper. Every run either ends with you getting to the next level of your subconscious or being defeated by enemies. Then, you wake.

Each day in Redhaven is decided by your previous run: the further you progressed through a level the better you sleep, the better you sleep the more time you can spend wandering about the town. While in Redhaven you can talk to locals or gift them items (made from crafting resources from the dreamscape). Most of the time you get a short sentence describing the gist of the conversation had between Cassidy and the local, however, if you talk to a person enough, or give them a gift they appreciate, you will level up your relationship with them. Leveling up relationships will unlock items that can be found randomly during runs and improve passive skills you select before each sleep. However, the best part of leveling up is the conversations you have, they’re only simple conversations, where the new girl in town is getting to know people that live in Redhaven, and they don’t trigger every time. But these conversations are written with such warmth and sincerity that having one feels like a treat and means you are never too bothered to be pulled out of a run and into the real world. Most of this is down to the characters: a history teacher, a local journalist and Eve, the local barkeep, are all distinct characters with plenty of backstory and lovely anecdotes. This also has an impact on gameplay, as you get to know these characters, you take note of their interests, then when the time comes to craft gifts you can consult your notebook to help you figure out if any presents will improve your relationship with a character more so than others. Having a friendly woman talk to you in the bookstore about her favourite comicbook character, only for you to gift her a notebook with an illustrated cover a few days later makes the whole game feel rather wholesome and warm.

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For a game that only just hit Steam Early Access, Dreamscaper feels surprisingly polished. Chill lo-fi music (to game and relax to) plays as you make your way around the sleepy town, neon lights and rain fill the background streets and items you find in your dreams cutely tied into reality (including a pair of yo-yos you can spin around and an oversized sword from “Cassidy’s favourite RPG when she was a kid”). With that said you can see where there is room for growth. Some glaring technical issues make themselves known after only a few runs; items don’t tell you what slot they’ll equip to when you find them, so you either have to equip them and check your buttons or look at what they’ll replace, some of the better dodges you can equip actually feel weirdly slower, and there’s plenty of balancing yet to be done. While other thoughts of potential mechanics will constantly pop into your head while you stroll around the town; you only ever see the waking hours of 18:00-21:00 and it would be fun to see how the player spends the rest of her day. Maybe it is because I’ve been playing Persona, but I can’t help but wish there were different activities you could choose to do to improve skills during the day (that way interacting with your new friends would feel all the more like you deciding to spend time with them). But that’s all a bit of “backseat game developing” and Afterburner studios have probably heard all this from the Discord server they invite you to join every time you quit the game.

As it stands Dreamscaper is a chill game that is easy to sink more time into than you’d expect from something that just hit Early Access. Despite some rough edges, it holds its own against other big name rogue-lite ARPGs like, the soon to be released, Hades, and there is still plenty that could be added. Dreamscaper is currently €18.49/$19.99 on Steam and it is full of potential.

Pre-release copy provided by Freedom! Games and Stride PR