Dreamscaper - PC Review

Dreamscaper by developer Afterburner Studios and publishers Freedom Games and Maple Whispering Limited—PC review written by Pierre-Yves.

Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

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This has been a long journey for me but even longer for the devs behind their brilliantly designed roguelite. Having seen several versions from the original Prologue to its Early Access debut, Afterburner Studio's Dreamscaper is both now finished and its final format bringing about an even more pleasant experience than anything having led up to it.

The premise is a fairly simple one though the execution however is much more complex and will engage and challenge you to continuously push further. Our protagonist Cassidy is a lucid dreamer and in their dreams they fight against monsters both big and small trying to reach something just over the next battle. With plenty of environments strewn with their own sets of challenges, there are more than enough weapons and abilities to help in this fight. If Cassidy falls in battle though, then it's game over, they wake up, and you get to start it all over again the next night.

For the three versions that I've dreamt my way through, this is how it starts. Cassidy goes to sleep and then falls into a realm far different from our own. Every night they find themselves with different weapons (melee and ranged) but the constant is their special ability and dodge style which remain the same until new ones are picked up. From there, the layouts of the environment are randomized from placement to enemies and items. Your goal is to make it to the boss of that realm, defeat them, and then move on. As time goes on however, Cassidy can unlock gear to start with so that you at least always have an edge at the start of the first realm.

It's simple, it's effective, but it's a roguelite so the journey will be anything but an easy one. So it's for this reason that each environment can contain upgrades to your current gear if you either find them or have enough accumulated sand to pay for them. What some people may not find working well for them is honestly a part of the challenge and even while I didn't like it at times, it's something to deal with and that is the actual weapons that you pick up. Each one of these has a different style from the amount of damage they can do per second (DPS) to their speeds and ease of use. Being behind a wall that needs to be created, Cloud’s Buster Sword is stupid powerful but slow in Cassidy’s hands while Lloyd’s Twin-Blades are stupid fast but don’t do as much damage. Add in wolf head gauntlets, bare fists, and a variety of other bladed weapons and those of higher DPS may not always be your cup of tea. But like I said, this is a roguelite and with roguelites / likes, there’s always a challenge factor and this is part of Dreamscaper’s.

Upfront this may sound like a lot to get adjusted to but in practice, you start to barely notice it as time goes on due to the fact that on average a realm can take you about ten minutes to clear based off of how many rooms you actually want to go through versus how many rooms it takes to find the boss. From the beginning though, there’s been an ease of use or accessibility with Dreamscaper as it’s instantly possible to teleport between any room that has been visited. Making that even easier at times is that the boss room can be entered and then exited as long as you haven’t “touched the big shiny object” that will lead you to fights of epic proportions.

Between all of this though is perhaps my favorite addition to Dreamscaper that came about at the beginning of its Early Access, Cassidy’s real life. Before going to sleep every night, Cassidy can explore the city that she’s living in. The book store, coffee shop, the bar, the park, the record store, each of these areas add a bit more to see outside of the dream realms. In Early Access, perhaps my one issue with the real world was that you had to do well in the dream world in order to not be tired enough the next day “after work” in order to explore the town and get to know the people. Gone from that version is requiring having to do well and keeping an accumulation of sand which acts as your currency. Now? Now you get to explore the town with a few new twists added into the mix.

Now being able to use sand to hearts content in the dream world to upgrade and buy new weapons, the real world will see you using a few other things that you picked up in order to help both the real and dream worlds explorations. From Cassidy’s room, you can craft gifts to give to people in order to increase their relationships which lead into dialog scenes. It’s a bit in the Persona vein but it does more than add a bit of slice of life as for every level increase of Cassidy’s relationships, Cassidy can use those as a bonus in the dream world such as extra armor, higher ranged attack, etc. From there, Cassidy can also meditate in the park to raise attributes such as max health or damage to bosses, go to the cafe to sketch new items to appear, or go to the bar to daydream new elements to show up within the dream realm.

A lot of these features are new to the full release, or new in that they are now their own thing and can be goals to strive towards. That said, I like how this progression has been structured and that Cassidy can now view all of these places and potentially interact with all of the other NPCs instead of just select ones depending on the amount of time that was available after a successful or semi-successful run. It feels more natural and less punishing than the other way around that was being rewarded for having done well, but not every run will go well. Just last week I went on a fresh run to try something out and I aced the first two floors and their bosses only to die stupidly to a combination of lightning strikes and getting cornered by a bad dodge. That’s all it took to wipe out and game over for that night. So with how brutal things can get, it was nice to have some of the other elements soften up.

Now here are my two big things with Dreamscaper. First, it has gorgeous artwork that makes it easy to look at for hours on end. The second, the background audio regardless of the volume level never gets boring or stagnant, it just works. I guess third, the loading times were amazing and when in either the realm or the dream realm, going from location to location takes seconds and there’s never a wait time, it’s just done. Everything just felt right and properly optimized to the points that the CPU fans never even kicked in as they didn’t need to while other titles have thrown the damn thing into overdrive making me wonder how what I was looking at could even come close to taxing a RTX 3080.

Summary

So from the Prologue to Early Access and then to full release, Afterbuner Studios’ Dreamscaper has been an amazing adventure. With multiple easy to use systems, an intuitive combat system and plenty of upgrades to be discovered and unlocked, there’s more than enough dungeon crawling and rogueliting to keep anyone busy for a long while. If it gets too easy? Just add in some extra modifiers and see if you’re still swinging the same tune or getting kicked out of the record store for not knowing what Math Rock was.

Score: 8.75 / 10

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Dreamscaper - PC Preview

Dreamscaper by developer Afterburner Studios and publishers Freedom Games and Maple Whispering Limited—PC review written by Pierre-Yves.

Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

With everything that has gone wrong so far with 2020, Afterburner Studios’ Dreamscaper: Prologue was perhaps one of the few things that didn’t. Combining an excellent and easy on the eyes artstyle with an evolving Roguelike that offers a bit of social simulation on the side, finishing the Prologue and the Supporter Edition’s bonus stage simply left me wanting more.

Being rather upfront, I loved the Prologue and have been waiting as patiently as possible for the preview builds to go live so that I could not only sink more time into it, but also discover what has been newly added. Getting my wish, Dreamscaper’s current Early Access build hosts a whole new set of levels and some new features that just make it worth going through all over again. In the grand scheme of things though, there’s not that much that has changed between the prologue and the Early Access build that couldn’t still be covered in our article from back in April, but, we are going to go back through it all anyways!

For those coming to us now though, Dreamscaper is

“A surreal, roguelite inspired ARPG with modernized hack'n'slash combat about lucid dreaming. Warp the dreamscape around you to battle a nightmarish depression that lives in a young woman’s subconscious. DREAM. DIE. WAKE. REPEAT.”

Taking on the role of a young woman named Cassidy who’s recently moved into this new town seemingly for work, you get to meet and get to know her coworkers as well as some of the locals in the possible few hours that Cassidy has “free” at the end of the day. At first it can feel a bit hollow as you ease into the combat heaviness but Dreamscaper soon shows its colors as you earn enough rapport with those that can be interacted with. Not only does Cassidy start to have meaningful conversations, but deeping Cassidy’s bonds with these people will start to unlock new possible abilities and weapons that Cassidy can use while dreaming. Only being able to chat in bursts at first, as you continue to fight hordes of monsters in her dreams you’ll soon be able to make presents to help move these possible conversations along. Think, Atlus’ Persona series on a much smaller scale.

The rest of the time, you’ll be hacking & slashing your way through different visual environments. Keeping the first two environments from the Prologue for a sense of familiarity, you’ll soon be coming up against new visuals and tougher foes that make you wonder if dying was really your fault. This is a Roguelike, and with all Roguelikes, chance is a very big part of it all. New weapons, new powerful abilities, new upgrades to existing ones, health potions, keys and bombs to unlock passageways. It’s all random and sometimes it’s all in the cards while other times? You either “git gud” or try all over again.

Dreamscaper is a true Roguelike. It’s not a Roguelight, Roguelite, Roguelike-ish, it’s a Roguelike. You have access to everything that you can hold onto until you die. Once you do? You start all over from scratch including all of the ability and stat upgrades such as extra attack, defense and health from defeating the bosses of a stage. The only thing you ever keep are the dropped items to help you craft gifts for those with which have the above mentioned benefits. Making things perhaps a touch easier than the Prologue however is that once you’ve defeated a boss, it’s your choice whether you want to face off against them all over again for all of the loot that they can drop, or take the easy way up and simply acquire the upgrade. That, is your choice.

Now this next part is subtle, but I really appreciated it and I don’t know if it would have worked so well if Dreamscaper wasn’t a Roguelike. The lucid dreaming that Cassidy does is her way of fighting against her depression. Having been depressed, and I don’t mean casually moping around for a few days because life decided to suck, but really depressed because of suddenly losing my father and then eventually going to therapy for it, it’s hard and a lot of days will not be victories. Not even small ones and Dreamscaper because of being a Roguelike and heavily luck based simulates that as some nights the battle is basically lost before it even begins and that cuts into Cassidy’s social time as she just won’t feel up to it. And it’s ok. There’s always the next night to start over and try to get back on your feet. It’s a long process. It’s hard as hell, and the gameplay reflects this as you help Cassidy fight against her demons.

Summary

So overall, from the Prologue into the Early Access build where Dreamscaper will continue to be refined, I would heavily suggest it to both fans of combat based adventures as well as fans of Roguelikes. The only real question left to ask from this point will be what will the final version hold in store for us? Until then though? May your aim be true and your lucid dreaming victorious!

Score: N/A

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Dreamscaper: Prologue - PC Preview

Dreamscaper: Prologue by developer Afterburner Studios and publishers Afterburner Studios, Maple Whispering Limited—PC (Steam) preview written by Pierre-Yves with a copy provided by the publisher.

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

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Dreamscaper: Prologue is the first chapter in an upcoming series by Afterburner Studios that sees a young woman named Cassidy combat her subconscious by lucid dreaming at night. Successfully Kickstarted last summer, I’ve just recently had the chance to take out both the first stage and boss fight from the Prologue as well as the “second stage” currently labeled under the Supporter’s Addition. If there’s anything I know for sure after spending a couple hours on the current build of this title? I both want more, and hope it doesn’t take too too long to make it over to the consoles.

So where to start? If we start with the tutorial, it’ll teach you everything you’ll ever need to know about Dreamscaper. Starting off every night, you’ll land in a central room that links to a series of other rooms. Each room that you move into can, and I say “can”, contain a variety of different experiences. Some have enemies, some have items, some have shops to buy abilities or weapons, others have trade-off, puzzles or combat challenges. It doesn’t take long to move from room to room as you work your way towards the boss. All said and done? This process takes about ten minutes per venture before going back to the real world for a small break to your hands before doing it all over again.

The controls are absolutely solid and fully configured for a controller which for me? Made me quite happy as it’s my preferred gaming method and the default layout is honestly perfect. You move around with your left thumbstick, you attack with “X”, your secondary attack is “Y”, you dodge with “A” and you interact with the world with “B”. Adding onto these are two special attacks on your left and right bumpers before moving over to being able to use a shield with the left trigger and being able to fire projectiles with the right thumbstick and trigger. Nothing is wasted in terms of finger placement and everything is calibrated to the point that if you want to dodge, you’re dodging and there’s no delay on it which brings me to the next set of items, ability and item upgrades.

Moving around and dodging by default are alright, but they can be improved by upgrading them both in terms of speed, sub-features and distance. Some of the first upgrades that I found made Cassidy a little faster and added the probability of say a 20% chance of freezing enemies every time I dodged. Later and much more interesting was the ability shadow step that honestly looked like Cassidy stepped through the shadows instead of dodge rolling as it left shadow versions of herself as she stepped three times before landing where you intended to. There are other types of dodging available and some of them may be too good to be true as there are tradeoffs such as no longer being able to block, move twice as fast but not being able to dodge and so on.

Weapons were just as varied and interesting to learn. One of the first and a tribute to Cassidy’s favorite RPG is Cloud’s Buster Sword from Final Fantasy VII. With the remake just in a few days from the time of this writing and last week by the time of the posting, I thought it was fairly appropriate to start off with it. Otherwise, you have a series of blades, hammers and martial art styles with being able to punch your enemies. Every weapon has a base range of DPS (Damage Per Second) and upgraded versions or different weapons can be randomly found throughout your adventure. The same applies to ranged weapons like the starting bow into frisbees, kunai and slingshots.

All of these features boil into a very quick and compact roguelite dungeon crawl that will either see you succeed, or fail and sent back to the real world but at the cost of not having the energy to head out and get to know people in a coffee shop, bookstore and a bar. The better you do in the dreamscape, the more energy you have to stay out in the real world after you’ve finished working for the day. Sitting on her bed at 6PM, it’s up to you as to whether Cassidy head’s to bed to fight another night or head out and chit-chat with people. A little like Persona or Stardew Valley / Rune Factory, chatting bit by bit will help you get to better know people however giving them presents will advance the process much quicker.

Now starting off I wondered what the point of advancing these relationships was but it came back two-fold. On one hand, as you advance getting to know these people you’ll unlock new items to be used in the dreamscape. Melee weapons, ranged weapons, shields and abilities. On the other hand, and the more important of the two, is that as you really get to know these people you also get to better understand Cassidy and how she views the world. She’s not just a young woman with a PlayStation hooked up to her living room TV. She’s a young woman with an actual depth of character and worries of her own in this world that she exists in before she battles her subconscious in order to hopefully actually sleep through the night.

And this is only the Prologue.

Note(s): I don’t do this often, but before concluding, I would honestly suggest if you are a fan of roguelites or hack & slashers, to head over to Dreamscaper: Prologue’s Steam page and Wishlist it to show your interest. I have.

So all in all, Dreamscaper: Prologue is a fantastic title and it’s not even in its final format. From the care that was taken to how Cassidy moves, to how she swings her weapons and how she interacts in the real world before diving back into another night of combating the nightmares of her subconscious, there’s nothing I want more than honestly “more”. Being the first chapter there’s more to come and I certainly can’t wait for it.

Score: N/A

Update (2022): You will find on all pages listed with Dreamscaper: Prologue that the game and the supporter edition has been removed with this written in a block:

Notice: At the request of the publisher, Dreamscaper: Prologue - Supporter's Edition is no longer available for sale on Steam.

All of those pages publish the new release and updated Dreamscaper 1.1.

Expired link: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1257640/Dreamscaper_Prologue__Supporters_Edition/

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