Review: Dreams is an endless gallery of pure imagination

PlayStation is known for its incredible creator-driven projects, it’s their bread and butter. Dreams is no exception to that mantra. Media Molecule has spent the entire generation developing this incredibly ambitious title that allows you to make whatever your imagination can conjure up come to life.

Dreams is a game that really makes no logical sense in terms of how it even exists. It’s a technical wonder, more so than just about any other game that has ever released. It’s simple, yet unbelievably complicated, but as Bethesda’s Todd Howard would say: “It just works”.

There are two significant components to Dreams: Playing other peoples’ creations and creating your own. It’s hard to review this game because a large part of the quality of it is in the hands of its own players and what they can do with the tools at hand. While not every single thing is great (some don’t even seem to work as the creator had intended), a lot of the things people are making are unbelievable impressive.

Whether that be a short film, a game, music, or some sort of art, Dreams is an endless blank canvas for the imagination. It lets the mind run free without the limits of a pen and paper but also without the restrictions that come with complex coding. Media Molecule simplifies everything as much as they can and creates a domain for your inspirations to come alive.

In my time with this dreamscape, I saw things such as realistic depictions of a table of food, a sculpture of Wolverine, a strange game about a creature trying to hug everyone around him but they all choose to kill themselves… for some reason? Maybe it’s a metaphor for something I don’t fully understand but it was cool nonetheless.

One of my favorites was a short experience where you’re in a waiting room that is purgatory. You’re waiting for your fate to be decided by the almighty powers: Do you go to Heaven or Hell? While you wait, you can explore the space and walk through some hallways.

Some text on the walls speak to you and give condescending comments or mess with you, you get teleported to lush spaces beyond the generic blank waiting room, and it’s incredibly cool. With no loading screens, you move from purgatory, to a green hill with a beautiful tree and picture-perfect blue sky, to this giant palace, and back to purgatory. It reminded me of the sequence in Bioshock Infinite where you go between all the lighthouses.

Someone, just some random PS4 player, created all of this from scratch in Dreams. Media Molecule takes all the things we might take for granted or not pay attention to in traditional games and highlights them within Dreams. Whether that be AI, specific mechanics, or how levels are designed, when you see regular people doing it, you realize how impressive it really is.

I’ve even seen some people put logo sequences for themselves at the start of their own creations. The tools Media Molecule has given players really allow for everything you could possibly need to make what you want.

The tools may be a bit daunting on their own but there’s a healthy amount of incredibly insightful tutorials to help you figure out just what every slider and dial does. While I personally lacked a worthy idea to invest my time into creating something of substance, I easily could’ve made something thanks to what I learned from the in-depth tutorials.

Anyone who has the vision and drive to create can do it within Dreams very easily. If not, there’s still plenty for you to as already mentioned. Part of the beauty of Dreams is also how easy it is to just pick up and play. There’s a steady stream of content with Media Molecule doing regular game jams, creating their own content, and featuring other people’s work to ensure replayability.

If you really need an idea of what the software is capable of, Media Molecule has also created a fairly lengthy multi-genre game called Art’s Dream. It follows a washed-up musician on an adventure as he goes through a bit of an existential crisis. It’s a pretty well-written and acted game that acts as a platformer, adventure game, and more, all built within Dreams.

Sometimes when I watch a movie, I’ll see a shot or an effect and think to myself “How did they do that?” There were several moments in Art’s Dream that made me think “How did they make that?” The entire Dreams is experience is really seeing the magic in games and how much of an incredible art form it can be.

There are also very few load times which is almost inconceivable given how much is going on within this game. There are a ton of games, hub spaces for you to play around in, and so much more. Whatever is going on under the hood of Dreams must be a logistical and technical nightmare but one that’s worthwhile.

The Verdict

Dreams is not only a technical wonder that is borderline sorcery but it’s a revolutionary PS4 exclusive. It’s a wholesome space to create, share, and play where people are constantly setting new standards, pushing new limits, and blowing your mind. Media Molecule has made something that should’ve been impossible work and work very well.

Simply put, Dreams makes you believe in the magic of video games.