In the series of classic works created by the Beatles (whether together or apart), there are always some ethereal sounds between sleep talk and riddles in the lyrics and the melody itself. For example, “Let it be” was a song that Paul McCartney wrote down after he dreamed of his mother humming a little tune to him during his nap.
Paul’s sainthood in the world, of course, cannot be separated from Lennon, who was deified after his death. “Dream of Number 9” is the song he tried to describe his dream. According to Lennon himself, the incomprehensible lyrics in the introduction were words he heard in his dream, which had no meaning and did not need any explanation. Later, British writer David Mitchell (representative work “Cloud Atlas”) used the artistic conception of this song as a creative motivation and wrote a novel of the same name called “Dream of Number 9”, which tells how a teenager in Japan, a fictional history, juggles three major life events: being involved in gangs, looking for his father, and picking up misses. Although both received the communion of the Beatles, Mitchell’s “Dream of Number 9” has a more refreshing reading pleasure than Haruki Murakami’s “Norwegian Wood”.
The game “Dreams Universe” (hereinafter referred to as “Dreams”) to be reviewed in this article is like “Dream No. 9” created by Sony’s first-party manufacturer Media Molecule (hereinafter referred to as MM) in seven years, but unlike Lennon’s unsolvable metaphysics, MM’s “Dream No. 9” can be a beautiful melody like a murmur, or an adventure story about a boy’s growth. Whether the player chooses one or all depends on personal imagination, hobbies and hands-on ability.
1. Teach a man to fish, rather than teach him to fish. Teach him the bride of the sea, the earth and the sky
The process of level editors developing into independent creation games can be simply seen as the process of entertaining the game development tools themselves. For example, the underground manufacturers who made pirated FC cartridges would put a part of the cracked game program in the foreground, and then the custom map of “Tank War” appeared; then with the continuous improvement of computer game hardware and software, map editors brought vigorous vitality to games such as “Counter-Strike” and “Warcraft 3”, and also derived the colorful sky of MOD under the geek culture. When “Minecraft” was fully developed and “Super Mario Bros. Maker” became popular on YouTube, manufacturers and players found a way to satisfy and benefit both parties – that is, manufacturers set the stage and players performed, achieving a great harmony between playing, creating, and sharing.
Dreams is another pioneer on this path. Before that, the LittleBigPlanet series had already earned millions of dollars in sales and hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue from in-app purchases such as material packs and DLCs. It was also the first “60-dollar game” to be included in the free game list on PSN. In my country, LittleBigPlanet is a representative of a special type of game, namely, “If I give it to my wife/girlfriend, what games can you recommend, boss?”
Some tough guys couldn’t bear to play the game alone, so they bought it for the girl, but neither of them liked it.
On the one hand, the cute look of Sackboy is incompatible with the aesthetic taste of most domestic users who come to play games like The Last of Us, GTA5, and God of War on PS3/PS4 (the only person who can make a tough guy cry is another tough guy); on the other hand, from the user feedback I got from a physical store operator, adult users in my country really can’t play creation games that emphasize hands-on skills and content sharing, and the reason is similar to “liking food but not cooking”. When selling Little Big Planet, I often have to lie to girls and say “This is very similar to Super Mario, fun and simple”. But in fact, as a player, you must know that creation games have never been simple, and when you play Little Big Planet simply as Super Mario, it will be a bit boring.
One of the main features of Dreams is that it does not limit the scope of game types to creativity.
As a game development tool, Dreams is somewhat similar to RPG Maker, but compared to the plain graphics of RPG Maker, the single genres of Super Mario Maker and Little Big Planet, and the distinct cultural themes of DQ: The Creation Game, Dreams is much freer and more complex. Because it no longer contains a pile of material packages under semi-propositions, but players can set their own questions and answer them by themselves, and even be free to write essays in math exams and practice physical fitness in Chinese exams, starting from the rule level, and doing God-level DIY.
2. “You want to learn? I’ll teach you.”
It seems that this is specifically to fulfill the line in the 2015 E3 promotional video: “Everything you see next was created with Dreams on PS4.” In the function demonstration of Dreams, MM officials not only set up enough performance content, but also incorporated inner monologue narratives and the use of levels to show the inner world of the characters, echoing the ambition of Dreams to convert all the player’s thoughts and dreams into playable content.
In this story about how a jazz musician breaks up with his lover and band, and then calls back the people around him and stands on the stage to show his skills, Dreams first shows the definition of “non-school” in the genre. To put it bluntly, there is no fixed type template of horizontal level-breaking or role-playing. During the game, players will follow the protagonist and participate in various unexpected gameplays such as platform jumping, AVG-style puzzle solving, and music games.
The level structure is broken down on a spatial level, and each section tells the fate of the same character in a different way. In order to match the protagonist’s identity as a jazz musician, the music game follows the basic gameplay of following the melody and pressing the button to confirm, but the soundtrack itself is very exciting. One of the psychedelic animations also pays tribute to the image design of Queen in the MV of “Bohemian Rhapsody”.
It looks like the creator is providing ideas and thoughts to players who are interested in creating.
In addition to the gameplay, compared to the cartoon-like treatment of “LittleBigPlanet”, the “Dreams” demo level deliberately highlights the expressiveness and scalability of art. The protagonist and the story probably deliberately choose the perspective of the adult world, so the whole picture is darker and can be visually aged. The character modeling uses a sculpture-like material, the facial expressions are vivid and exaggerated, and the body movements are full of physical beauty, which contrasts with the hazy and dim depressing atmosphere in the story, showing the posture of the characters struggling to escape from the predicament.
The inner imagination and memories of the characters have become the platform jumping gameplay that MM is more familiar with. Players control cartoon characters to break through obstacles and illuminate the inner world of the protagonist. Compared with “The Paper Tearaway”, the material selection of “Dreams” is extremely rich. Whether it is a small robot with smooth surface texture, sound and light effects, or a plastic doll, it is satisfactory. More importantly, because players must have a learning mentality of wanting to understand the precision of game creation, those trigger mechanisms, mobile jumping platforms, and even the environmental factors in the background will be digested and absorbed by the players, and they will do in-depth research when they play.
The demo level highlights the mix of various materials and painting styles, allowing players to understand the comprehensive diversity of the tool
3. Baicao Garden and Sanwei Book House
From its announcement in 2013 to its final release today, this time seems a bit too long considering that Dreams is definitely not a 3A game. But when you open the main content of the game, that is, level creation and free sharing, you will see that MM may not want to make a traditional game at all this time, but to release a game development kit with a physics engine and material package.
This game will soon spread like wildfire through all kinds of masterpieces past and present.
Let’s talk about the “Herb Garden” part first. Since all users use the “Dreams Engine” to develop games, it is destined that there will be a variety of games and no repetition. You can follow the game’s recommended list or scratch your own lottery ticket to choose any game from the creations of players around the world. This is still a basic operation. But the real excitement is that because “Dreams” does not limit the game type and gives a high degree of creative freedom in the material and style of the picture, you may see anything in front of you, and some highly praised works are not playable at all. They are installation art or pure images composed of a combination of materials.
Looking at the actual content and quality of the uploaded games, the overall release is indeed unstoppable. I randomly clicked on one, Space Invaders, which is not new to the old hands, so I switched to the next one. A museum infiltration game, where you have to knock out the security guard within three minutes and then get the fossils in the tube, is a bit interesting, so I switched to the next one.
Well, the low-desire minimalist route, a ball jumps over a few irregularly placed sticks, what’s the point? Change to the next one. The first-person kitchen scene, but how to play it, where are the character’s hands, damn, is this Dalsi’s arm? The modeling is not even done properly, what is the point of uploading it, change to the next one. What the hell is the face that looks like Bob Marley all over the screen for? Change to the next one. Imitating Kirby, well, it feels right, how can it jump so far at once, hey, why can’t I see Kirby on the screen? Did he really turn into a meteor? Change to the next one. Sonic Adventure, the classic first level, how can you just run and run, it’s too confusing, change to another one. Why is this pure text, it’s all in Latin and I can’t understand it (if you don’t pretend, you won’t die, even if it’s English, I probably can’t understand it)? This is a problem, it’s better for foreigners to make fewer AVGs.
The above is the user-uploaded content I experienced on “Dreams” within half an hour. There is not one of them that I want to try a second time, but at the same time I still maintain a strong desire to have fun in it. This is the feature of “Dreams” compared to a specific XX simulator. It is more mixed and there is bound to be a hundred schools of thought. It is estimated that there will soon be those new and different anchors on YouTube who specialize in showing how “Dreams” is a chaos of demons to attract a wave of traffic.
Not only do you not know what the next chocolate bar will taste like, you can’t even be sure it will be chocolate.
No matter how wildly the Hundred Herb Garden grows, it still needs the step-by-step tutorial guidance and student practice in Sanwei Bookstore. It has to be admitted that although “Dreams” is not a professional game development software, for most players, its level construction part is still far more complicated than any popular level creation game on the market.
The two-dimensional operation method alone makes the creation stage very difficult to get started.
First of all, there is the obvious operational threshold. Dreams supports MOVE controllers. When using DS controllers, players not only have to master the single-key input and combination keys of all the buttons of Paul, but also have to do some calibration work on the gyroscope. In the early days, just “moving material A 45 degrees to point B” can make those lazy players give up. Then, Dreams supports users to develop 3D games, so the requirements for players’ hands-on ability and imagination are instantly raised. You will find that just building a “blank model” for what you imagine in your mind is already a big project.
Finally, there is the question of how to play the game, which you also need to raise and solve yourself. Unlike “Mario Maker”, which is still Mario no matter how tricky it is, or “DQ Creators”, which is desperately doing real estate, the degree of freedom of “Dreams” is really too high, so that the lower limit of its creation part is sufficient spatial imagination, operational coordination and time and energy to familiarize yourself with the use of tools, and the upper limit is currently unknown, but the “Dreams version of “Stardew Valley”” that has just begun to circulate on the Internet is definitely just the beginning. As the PS VR function is involved in the creation process in the future, or if a certain popular work can introduce more artists to participate, the vitality of this game will surely be limitless.
Conclusion: It is not recommended to play, but please pay attention to the Dream Machine
Although the subtext of “experimental nature” is often “no money in the pocket, using artistic sense to interpret, not looking to make a lot of money”, “Dreams”, which has been able to receive long-term support from Sony’s first-party resources, obviously has considerable ambition under the appearance of experimental nature. I have previously read an article in Science magazine about how “Minecraft” has a significant progressive significance for children’s education, which specifically talked about the role of creation games in addition to a large number of entertainment products.
Regardless of whether “edutainment” is scientific or not, when Microsoft spent a lot of money to acquire “Minecraft” and later made how AR devices would work on “Minecraft” a key topic, it actually demonstrated the cutting-edge value of this type of game. The long life cycle and continuous content creation by the user community are conducive to the practice and promotion of new technologies, and there is the possibility of the birth of explosive works at any time. All of these can be regarded as the hidden value of “Dreams” compared to other games. If this game is placed in my store, I will definitely not actively recommend it to customers, but from the perspective of a game reviewer and game culture enthusiast, I suggest that everyone here keep a close observation distance to this game, just like appreciating an online street performance at any time, to see what kind of surprises will be born in the hands of those excellent creators.
