Dreamview Weekly Roundup #72

Another Friday, is it? Lovely stuff - we quite like those. It’s the end of the week, a chance to look back at everything we’ve achieved over the past five days (resisting the urge to order pizza when we already have food in the house), and an excellent excuse to order pizza. Go on, you’ve earned it.

While you wait 30 minutes or less, why not help yourself to a starter bite of piping-hot Weekly Roundup? We’ve got mouthwatering recommendations for creations made in Dreams that you can consume this weekend - five delectable slices of art, dunked in the tangy garlic-and-herb sauce of WORDS. Bon appetit!

Ye Olde Opposite Daye#

by MrCaseyJones

Estimated playtime: 40 mins

Make way for the king - the king of COMEDY, that is. MrCaseyJones makes a noble return with the latest installment in their 'Opposite Day' series, a set of adventure games known for their cheeky gimmicks, sharp wit and gleeful mockery of the player. (Indeed, the time-to-laugh on this one is under the 30-second mark for us, courtesy of “You’re on thin ice!” “I’m on a ladder!”.) This time, there’s a literary twist in the tale: the majority of the dialogue in this Shakespearian romp is written in rhyming couplets. Indeed, a good portion of the laughs come from watching the writer tie themselves in knots trying to stick to the rhyme scheme - ‘away’ and ‘Mike-ay’, Casey, really? - and having their own characters call them out on it.

But while the main thread of this story is entertaining, making use of some of the Bard’s best zingers in fun new contexts, as usual, it’s the hilarious environmental gags that steal the show and cement Casey’s status as one of Dreams’ best humourists. From olde-worlde tutorial prompts, to massage parlour ‘Ay, There’s The Rub’ and laundry service ‘Out, Damn Spot!’, to the deadpan VO and cracking one-liners of Casey’s 5000 series of robots, the real challenge of Ye Olde Opposite Daye is in running a veritable gauntlet of comedy; it’s not easy to make it to the end of a level while bent double laughing.

RiverFall Lodge#

Estimated runtime: Looping

by Doweel_the_Dude

Being an estate agent in a fairytale land must be the easiest gig in the world. Imagine how blimmin’ simple it’d be to sell this enchanting cottage, designed and animated under the magical eye of the artist behind the E-e-e-epic Diorama Collection. “Huge vaulted ceilings, beautiful archway windows, and the roof naturally grows a kind of grass that can keep the whole place totally invisible to enemy warlocks. You’ve got the soothing sound of the waterfall right outside your door - you can bathe in that any time you want to add a cheeky seven extra minutes onto your lifespan. Oh, and there’s this lovely… glowing… thingy by the mailbox! No idea what it does, but it’s almost certainly going to conjure up something auspicious if you rub it. Anyway, does a pouch of four-leaf clovers and a shiny bottle cap sound like a fair price? Excellent - we’ll send the paperwork over right away via beemail.”

Windborne Tentude#

by arepera and sumesest

Estimated playtime: Replayable

Secretly, this particular kind of game is among our absolute favourites to play: a peaceful, small-scale world where the act of moving around it is a joy in itself, but there’s a compelling reason to explore. In Windborne Tentude, we find ourselves swooping and swinging around in a synchrocopter, squeezing the triggers to ascend and descend through a forest of skyscrapers blooming pink and orange puffs of foliage. When a flash of lettering appears around a corner in the water below, we dive down past fluttering birds to pick up a hidden song title - one of sumesest’s typically delicate and atmospheric compositions, which then gets added to the background soundtrack playlist. The cherry on top? Arepera’s ruined cityscape is procedurally generated - there’s something beautiful about their creative philosophy, “I try to create randomised and procedurally generated scenes hoping one will surprise me” - meaning that this dreamlike locale shifts its form each time you return for another flight of fancy.

Cyberpunk Radio#

by atheistsw

Estimated runtime: Looping

Lo-fi Girl? More like So-Last-Month Girl. Drag your listening habits kicking and screaming into the future with atheistsw’s jam-winning Cyberpunk Radio. There are a range of expertly composed urban nightlife scenes to cycle through while coMmunity-made beats bump and neon lights flicker; while the metallic layers of the imposing King Shah Hotel make for an inspiring view while we tap away at our keyboard, our personal pick has to be the busy highway thrumming underneath a skyline as loud as the music in your headphones.

Autism Artism Museum#

by JustinArt

Estimated playtime: 20 mins

2022 is shaping up to be the year of the Dreams museum - we suspect multiple-award-winning exhibition The Idyllium might have something to do with the renewed coMmunity interest - and we’ve been looking forward to JustinArt’s own interpretation ever since we saw it advertised via their DreamsCom booth this year. The Autism Artism Museum is not just a thoughtfully realised space that’s a breeze to explore, thanks to careful and accessible signposting - it’s also a tribute to the creator’s point of view as an autistic artist.

While some of the works on display are very literal in their symbolising autism and autistic people - giant decorative versions of popular ‘stim toys’ being one example - other pieces lean into the abstract, such as a ‘Hyperfocus Locust’ sculpture with a singular, unblinking eye. Intentional or not, the varied approaches leave plenty of room for all sorts of different brains to connect with what’s on display. All of the works are educational in some way, with JustinArt providing commentary on what each artwork represents - and, wonderfully, even a few laughs. Museums can sometimes feel stuffy, sterile, buttoned-up: this is one that feels personal in the best possible way, and makes a real effort to be truly open to all.

Check out the playable edition of this week's Dreamview Weekly Roundup right here in 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)