This is my sort of thing. Many times over the years I’ve felt a burst of creativity and threw myself headlong into a new thing. Whether it is writing a book, learning to draw Manga or even writing reviews on this site there comes a time when the creative spark needs nurturing for good or ill.
Dreams on PS4 is the perfect toolbox for nurturing anyone who has an interest in gaming at any level. It is basically adult lego for game design and you will either become an expert at it or satisfy your needs creatively by experimenting with it. Words simply don’t do this creation from Media Molecule justice.
Starting off you may be a bit overwhelmed, you control a small furry imp on the screen that acts as your cursor and hand in this blocky world. You can immediately go into the Dreams universe and begin playing or go straight into creating and see where you end up after doing a few tutorials. I’d recommend playing a few games first to be amazed at what professionals can do with the toolset available. The first game you should play is Art’s Dream.
Playing in the mind of depressed jazz musician Art, you control the imp and numerous other characters as this 3-hour game shows you exactly what is possible with this toolset. It is infinitely better than most games currently available and the fact that it was created entirely in Dreams is jaw-dropping. The game looks beautiful and crosses many genres, from a platformer, to point and click adventure right through to twin-stick shooter and bullet hell at the end. It is a triumph of design and application but if anything it scared me that something so good could be made with the toolset that had now been left open for me to play with.
Luckily, there is plenty to do that doesn’t involve making the next AAA title. You can jump into more creations by the designers or by the community. What you actually have here is an open-source console that allows you to take other peoples creations and expand on them or add to them as well as creating your own from scratch.
The control scheme takes a little while to get used to but soon by a combination of controller pointing and button commands you will be placing elements in your chosen worlds. The imp is controlled by the movement controls on the PS4 controller and despite concerns, this works well and is very intuitive. That doesn’t mean to say that placing blocks and constructions in levels is easy immediately. You will need to play through the many fun tutorials before even beginning to try to create your own game. Luckily they are done in a fun and rewarding way and all of them unlock new pieces for your home space or homepage in the game, so they never feel like wasted time.
As you may have guessed I’ve barely scratched the surface of this toolbox, but be assured that this is definitely something you should check out if you have even a passing interest in playing a variety of homebrew games. Already the creations by some members of the community are much better than you would get on a mobile platform and there should be enough in the toolbox to satisfy an amateur like me. If you have any reservations about giving this a try, leave them behind and snap it up as somewhere, somehow someone will have made the game you always wanted to play within it.
There is nothing out there on any platform like Dreams.
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