Like Super Mario Maker and LittleBigPlanet, Media Molecule’s Dreams is a game creation tool that allows players to create their own interactive worlds, and share them with other players. But instead of the side-scrolling platforming featured in those two games, Dreams gives players a much larger canvas to play with, encompassing “games, music, art and everything in-between, and beyond.”
Dreams has been available to download as an Early Access title through the PlayStation Store since last April, and in that time, the game’s community’s has filled the “Dreamiverse” with a huge selection of custom creations. And last week the developer launched the full version of Dreams for the PS4 through the PlayStation Store and as a retail disc release.
Critics have been extremely positive about the possibilities offered by Dreams and they had a lot of good things to say about it…
About Dreams
If you can DREAM it, you can PLAY it!Explore and play in an ever-expanding Dreamiverse bursting with games, music, art and everything in-between, and beyond. Discover amazing creations from players around the world and experience the awe-inspiring story campaign, Art’s Dream. Learn how to design your own games, animate, make music, and more with easy-to-follow tutorial videos – and then share your ideas in an online social network of creativity.
The only limit is your imagination.
Platforms: PS4
Publisher: Sony Interactive Entertainment
Developer: Media Molecule
Genre: Game Creation
Release Date: February 14, 2020
ESRB Rating: Teen
Destructoid
Review – 9.5/10
“How do you even review Dreams?
It’s a question I’ve asked, and been asked. Even now, as I try to stall so the right words might spill out of my subconscious and capture some of its playful magic, I’m grappling with possible answers. It’s such a wide-ranging artistic experience. What we get out of it will drastically differ from person to person.
[…]
It’s easy to look at Dreams from afar and wave it off because you don’t feel imaginative enough – especially when you see the kinds of user-made games that rise to the top of the recommendation engine and tend to make headlines. Dreams players are already an ingenious bunch, and as the community figures out novel new ways to use the toolkit, the quality bar is only going to rise.
It can be intimidating at first! But any energy you invest will be repaid multiple times over.
Once you learn the ropes – how to work in a 3D space, where to find that one crucial UI element, which shortcuts are life-savers – you’ll discover the beauty of Dreams: that it’s not that tough or time-consuming to create cool things. Media Molecule worked hard for years and years so we don’t have to.”
Game Informer
Review – 9.5/10
“Dreams is an idealistic vision of game development, where people create, collaborate, and share games purely for the love of gaming. No Dreams game may ever reach the polish of a triple-A title, but they also lack the cynical business side of game development, where test groups and microtransactions take precedence over unbridled creativity. The prospect that we’ll someday see future developers who got their start in Dreams seems inevitable, but also moot – in a very real sense, Dreams players already are game developers.”
GameSpot
Impressions – Extremely Positive
“What is Dreams, exactly? That’s a question I’ve been asked a lot this week. In the broadest sense, Dreams is a toolkit for creating all sorts of video games, from puzzle platformers to bullet hell shooters, action RPGs, and anything else you can put your mind to. But it’s also so much more than that. It’s a place where you’re given the ability to create whatever you can imagine, even if it’s not technically a video game. It could be a short story, a musical, a highly detailed plate of food, or characters for other people to use in their own projects.”
IGN
Review – 9/10
“It’s a cliche, but Dreams really is something that needs to be played to fully grasp an understanding of. It’s unlike anything else: an ambitious project that has been expertly brought to life by Media Molecule, and an audacious experiment in game design that gives you endless ways to enjoy your time with it. The creation tools allow for ultimate expression despite there being a few controller related challenges to work around – never enough to deter. The vast range of experiences already on offer via Dream Surfing means that no two sessions playing it are ever the same, offering fresh ways to have fun every time you start it up and see what community creations have popped up while you’ve been away. Whether you just want to create, purely play, or get involved in a bit of everything, Dreams offers it all to you. This is one dream I urge you not to sleep on.”
Push Square
Review – 9.6/10
“It may have taken the better part of a decade to make, but the arrival of Dreams feels significant. It represents a whole new way for people to make things and share them with the world. Media Molecule has made a suite of tools that feel intuitive to use, but more than that, it’s built a social platform where players can collaborate and explore the imaginations of others. It’s a technical marvel, a creative miracle, and one of the most innovative games in years.”
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