Episode 16 - Surprisingly Little All Star - Dreams

You may say I’m a podcast, but I’m not the only one. Welcome back to Describing the Skybox! This week for our second episode of Mystery May this year, the die has decided we play Dreams, the game development software slash game on the Playstation 4 (and 5). Dreams is an odd one to talk about in our format to some degree, as a lot of what defines what this game is is tied up in the tools it provides for designing not just logic but also 3D models and music, which are robust in their capabilities but weirdly restricted to being used with a controller. It is difficult to get used to, but surprisingly capable once you do. Additionally though, Dreams is also a games browser with surprisingly good discovery tools. So, in addition to the creation tools, we played and will discuss a number of games that reflect what you can make with the tools provided. We’re going to be talking about the distinctive “Dreams-like” feeling of the games, the strengths developers can lean into and weaknesses they try to avoid, and we talk probably for too long about a meme game. Thank you for joining us again this week! Dreams was a time killer game for us a while ago so I was a little surprised at how interesting parts of it were when we took a deeper look. Have you ever made anything in Dreams? Let us know in the comments or over on our Discord! Mystery May served us a bit of a weird one this week, and it’s going to continue into next time as well because we’re talking about the Earthbound Halloween Hack by Toby Fox, so we hope you’ll join us then.