Dreamview Weekly Roundup #66
What’s that sound? A squeaky sort of screaming, with faint hints of buttons being slammed, spreadsheets being shuffled, and big beads of sweat rolling noisily down foreheads? Why, it’s the unmistakable din of Molecules working to ship DreamsCom ‘22 - which is happening NEXT WEEK, by the way. Gulp.
TGIF, eh? And TGTDWRIH - thank goodness the Dreamview Weekly Roundup is here!
A screenshot of a dark, top-down mine full of blocks of dirt, with a miner mining some gold ore. UI elements on the left display the date, how much ore the player has collected, and how many turns they have left today.
Mine'A'Day#
by oooDORIENooo
Estimated playtime: Replayable
Come and grab your daily diamonds - if you can, that is. Design whiz oooDORIENooo’s latest experiment makes brilliant use of the Time & Date Gadget added in a recent update: Mine’A’Day detects the current date and time in UTC, then transforms that data daily into a mining area populated with ore, meaning everyone in the world is faced with the same mine. The catch? You’re only allowed to mine 25 blocks per real-time day. Gold is great, sure, but the diamonds are what you’re really after - meaning that each day becomes a sort of exercise in mine-reading (sorry) as you try to tap into your latent psychic abilities to find the high-value treasure that’ll keep you ahead on the leaderboards. One of the latest and greatest reasons to log into Dreams every day - alongside the Daily DreamSurf, of course.
(Requires that you own Dreams)
A screenshot of two colourful cartoon aliens, a game show host and a contestant, standing in front of a screen which reads,
REAL STUPID HUMAN PHRASE?? OR FAKE STUPID HUMAN PHRASE!?#
by TRIX9, Keldbjones, SoundsLikeTreble and Joeycutts83
Estimated playtime: 15 mins
With their arcane rulesets, disorientating lights and sounds, and unearthly hosts, game shows are truly bizarre pieces of theatre. As such, the format makes for an excellent videogame. Indeed, we get shades of PlayStation classic Buzz! from TRIX9 and friends’ lavishly presented interstellar quiz, which has a great conceit: you’re playing as one of a troupe of aliens trying to guess whether an idiom is a real thing a human on Earth might say, or completely made-up nonsense. They’re all translated into English, but TRIX9 has sourced a variety of improbable expressions from all around the world (the exact origins of which you can discover in the menu after you’ve completed a playthrough), meaning you’d better know your shrimp sandwiches from your ear noodles if you want to post a respectable score. The stakes are high: there are a slate of, er, stimulating alien prizes on offer.
(Requires that you own Dreams)
A screenshot of the track artwork for Liver Cirrhosis / VII, featuring a layered monochromatic sphere and a black timeline with a circle showing how much of the song has played.
Liver Cirrhosis / VII#
Estimated runtime: 3 mins
The title is a bit of a head-scratcher (or, according to a quick Google search, liver-scarrer) - but you can tell from just a few listens that lots of work went into this drum ‘n’ bass banger. Precise and effective as the medical terminology of its title, thundering percussion, magic bells and synth pads meld together to create a full, rich mix. Prepare for a transcendent breakdown about halfway through, played on the ethereal-sounding frozen kalimba.
(Requires that you own Dreams)
A screenshot of a mountain path lined with wildflowers, leading up to a wooden lookout tower. You can just about see some of the mountains in the background from this angle - the view from the top is superior.
Lookout Mountain#
Estimated playtime: 5 mins
IansaneArtist is an expert at creating these intricate, natural-feeling virtual walking environments, set in the midst of worlds that convey a breathtaking sense of scale. Here, on a far-flung hilltop, pine trees and wildflowers encircle a wooden lookout tower. Just over the edge of the cliff lies an enormous lake, rippling gently in an unseen breeze; beyond that, craggy grey mountains loom, dusted with snow. Wandering around this scene is reward enough - but the cherry on top is that there’s a prize bubble to collect, which rewards you with Iansane’s fabulous lookout tower asset that you can stamp into your very own creations. More of this sort of thing, please.
(Requires that you own Dreams)
A screenshot of a laundry room containing washing machines, a laundry basket that can change the background music, and a toilet with a snake in it. A literal one. Get your mind out of the gutter.
The Daydream Vortex#
by Kwizzam
Estimated playtime: 30 mins
Kwizzam’s playable personal anthology is as inspiring as it is unpredictable. The whole idea is presented amusingly: standing before a swirling portal, your body is merrily disassembled and begins to spin like a haunted kebab before being sucked into a megamix of half-formed delights. You’ll then be spat out randomly into one of 68 little slices of thought, and you’re able to flick through them at your leisure: a platformer where you mince around as a bucket of jellybeans trying not to spill your contents; an underwater shoot-em-up; an interactive laundry room where weird things come out in the wash; a short animation of someone falling through the sky; a game where you fly a Magical Connie Bus through rings. The further you play, the more you can start to pick out their tastes, likes, and what they gravitate towards - desserts, platforming, weirdness. It’s like a private Autosurf for just this creator’s psyche, and an oddly effective way of getting to know how their mind works.
(Requires that you own Dreams)
Check out the playable edition of this week's Dreamview Weekly Roundup right here in Dreams!
A screenshot of the collection for this week's Dreamview Weekly Roundup, available to play in Dreams.
(Requires that you own Dreams)
Which creations caught your eye in the Dreamiverse this week, and why? Tell us about your personal picks over on the official Dreams forums!(opens in new tab)
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