Dreamscaper - don't let the bedbugs bite

Have you ever dreamed that you were in your favourite video game? I have sometimes and I have to admit, it’s not a nice dream when you see enemies come after you instead of a character on a screen. Cassidy knows this too well, as this is what happens in Dreamscaper.

Dreamscaper is described by its creator as an action role playing game roguelite with various elements from other genres. The one that is more apparent from the demo I played is the dungeon crawler aspect. After a first tutorial in the guise of the protagonist’s favourite game, you dive each night into one of Cassidy’s dreams, trying to beat her worst nightmares and find out more about her depression. Her dreams are divided into rooms, most of them crawling with monsters that Cassidy will have to beat, but there’s also some rooms with puzzles to gain special bonuses, others with healing platforms, and most importantly a handful of peaceful rooms where you can get new equipment or items.

These last rooms especially seem to tell a lot about Cassidy’s story, especially because many of them give you a choice. The most notable one being the one where you can either choose to ‘run away’ or to ‘stand your ground’. Each gives you a bonus, the first one to your dodge ability and the second one on your shield, but it seems to me like there’s also something rather significant behind these words. You can also tell by the description of certain items that she must have had quite a difficult childhood.

The atmosphere of the game is lovely and relaxed, but also very melancholic. The music does a great job at keeping you on edge during the fights while almost making you feel Cassidy’s pain during the peaceful moments. These are still nightmares she’s having, after all. The art style is gorgeous, with some aetherial paint effects that make the dreams feel like a beautiful picture, albeit a sad one.

The gameplay is easy to learn but can be difficult to master. Right from the start you already have a melee weapon, a ranged one, a shield, and a dodge ability. Throughout the game you can also gain additional abilities like explosions of fire or big ice spikes. You can get different equipment either by finding it around the dreams (if you’re lucky); as a reward for completing a puzzle room; or buying them from the shop room with the sand you collect around the level.

At the end of each level you can also spend the orbs you collected during the game to unlock new weapons and abilities which will be available in the next playthroughs. If you die at some point, you still get to keep half the orbs you collected.

There’s a big variety of them as well, and there's bound to be more than that in the full game: from small daggers to katanas to big two handed swords, but also heavy hammers, boxing gloves, and even a yo-yo. There’s a lot of different playstyles for different types of people.

I personally prefer quick movements even with less damage over slow and heavy hitting weapons which deal more damage, so I would rather go for the yo-yo instead of the big hammer if I find them around the level.

The unlocking screen is a point buy system, so you don’t need to save up the orbs in order to buy a certain item. For example, if you have 22 orbs you could choose to buy the yo-yo which costs 20, or you could buy a sword that costs 10 and two other weapons that cost 5 each, and you could then spend the remaining 2 orbs on something else so that it costs less next time you finish a level.

The enemies in the game get increasingly harder to beat, especially if you breeze through the levels without collecting more powerful items. Now I don’t know if the second level is supposed to be that hard because it is the final level of the demo, or if I am just very bad at the game, but I couldn’t get past the second level and I hope it’s just the former.

The yo-yo is the first weapon I bought. Where else do you get a chance to fight with one? (besides earthbound, of course)

It seems that the full game will also feature day-time gameplay which will be linked with the night-time dreams. You will be able to build relationships during the day which will affect the dreams during the night, giving you upgrades thanks to the friendships and giving more strength to the protagonist via the hopes her friends instilled in her. On the other hand, if you explore those dreams thoroughly you will also find out more about Cassidy’s story when she’s awake. I have a feeling the choices I mentioned earlier, like the ‘stand your ground’ versus ‘run away’, will greatly affect Cassidy’s story during the day.

We don’t know much about the plot from the demo, but we do know from the trailer and what the devs have told us that Cassidy has a deep depression, and it’s the goal of the game to dive into her subconscious to explore it and fight it. As the devs say in the game’s Kickstarter’s page: “She struggles with a move to a new city away from her support network; she feels more lost than ever. Even her dreams have changed.” While there’s no story in the demo, there are glimpses of said depression in various things. As I mentioned earlier, certain items suggest Cassidy might have had to run and/or fight a lot during her school years, that might be another player choice that will shape her past, but regardless of choice I believe she will end up with a difficult past. The dreams themselves are a huge symbol of her constant struggle with her depression. She literally fights her own demons every night. The locations of her dreams also feel nostalgic, you can’t help but feel that those places are all from her past and they’re all important somehow. They all seem lonely and deserted, there’s nothing there for her anymore besides her nightmares. It seems like she associates those places with trauma, but maybe that will change over the course of the game. “Each boss in Dreamscaper is a representation of one of Cassidy's most negative emotions that she struggles with throughout the game.”, the Kickstarter page specifies. Bosses like Isolation, Loss, and Fear amongst other ones, they’re all part of Cassidy and she needs to deal with them once and for all in order to conquer those struggles. In the peaceful rooms, during the demo, you can always see blue spirits floating away the moment you get near enough. Those spirits will feature more prominently in the full game, serving as echoes of Cassidy’s past.

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I must admit I am not usually a fan of dungeon crawlers, but this game hooked me. I don’t know if it’s the lovely aesthetics and sound, the atmosphere, the narrative, or the satisfying combat, but even if I couldn’t get to the end of the second level I kept trying and trying and I never got frustrated as it usually happens to me with games of this genre. I went in not expecting to like it, or at least not as much as I did, but I ended up really enjoying my time playing and being curious as to where this will go next. The prospect of a full story during the day intrigues me and I can’t wait to see how it resolves. This is a very interesting concept that is not often seen as it should be, only as of late we’re getting games about these difficult topics. It’s not easy to treat the subject with the weight it deserves, but it seems the team is going towards the right direction and doing a very good job of it.

The Kickstarter campaign has ended, and now the aim of the Afterburner Studios’ team is to release the game in early 2020. I’m looking forward to playing the full game once it’s released.

Here's the link to the Kickstarter page where you'll find everything you might need: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/afterburnerstudios/dreamscaper