Mini Review: Dreams of Another (PS5)

In Dreams of Another, you wield various weapons meant to cause damage, yet in this universe they instead restore harmony to your surroundings.

This distinctive new offering from the creators of the PixelJunk series appears eager to convey its concepts surrounding existence, mortality, and the essence of humanity, and although it certainly has much to express, it doesn’t result in a particularly compelling gameplay experience.

You take on the role of the enigmatic Man in Pajamas, who resides in an odd realm where everything is composed of minuscule dots of color. Much of your environment remains hidden, and the sole method to bring it into clarity is to shoot at everything.

Another entity, the Wandering Soldier, is a persistent ally. While he cannot fire weapons himself, you can provide him with items you gather to enhance basic skills and restore resources.

Revealing environments through shooting is not an entirely original concept, but the implementation here is certainly distinct. The point cloud technology powering the game’s unique visuals is quite remarkable and provides a very different visual experience. Utilizing firearms or launching explosives into clouds of abstraction and observing it all amalgamate can be rather gratifying, even if it becomes somewhat monotonous.

Regrettably, the game’s themes and narrative are presented in such a fragmented manner that we found it extremely challenging to engage with them.

You will engage for a moment or two, have a character (or entity) speak to you for a brief interval, and then the entire scene might shift, or even return you to the main menu. It will cycle through several environments as a chapter progresses, gradually guiding you through a scenario, but the jumbled nature of the presentation leaves everything feeling unnecessarily disorienting.

Additionally, the voice acting is exceedingly slow and, for the most part, very monotonously delivered; we found it all rather dreary, to be honest.

Dreams of Another is somewhat dream-like in certain respects; the way scenes intermingle and the surreal visuals and sounds place us in that mental state. However, much like dreams, the game likely does possess some form of significance at its core, but you are bound to forget it before too long.