Dreamview Weekly Roundup #12

Like a goose that’s stumbled into a salsa class and accidentally become a viral Internet star, before escaping the collab house it’s lived in for the last six months and ending up in a pond somewhere in Norfolk, the Dreamview Weekly Roundup was somewhere else for a bit, but is now finally where it belongs. No, not Norfolk - The Impsider, Media Molecule’s dedicated blog for good words about Dreams!

Every Friday for the past few months over on the Mm Blog（新しいタブで開く）, we’ve been writing short reviews of creations that are worth checking out in Dreams. It’s been the simplest way to publish articles on a weekly basis. But now, we’ve figured out how to bring the Weekly Roundup over to The Impsider to live alongside all its Dreamview buddies, as originally intended! (Hopefully they don’t tease it for being... different（新しいタブで開く）.)

No, the goose isn’t coming. The goose isn’t real - we made it up to illustrate a point in a very clear, very uncomplicated manner. No goose - just five fantastic things for you to check out in Dreams this weekend. Okay, please don’t throw things at us. Will a duck do?

HomeScreen#

by Aevox23

Play as a mysteriously intelligent duck (eh? Never say we're not good to you) in this ‘escape the house’ puzzler, which has you hunting down numeric clues and decrypting colour codes in order to unlock new doors. The further you journey through the rooms of this home, the more hints and items you’ll find to help you progress. Standard stuff - but the particularly intriguing element of HomeScreen is its presentation. The action plays out on a single screen, each section of the house fitting neatly and only visible once discovered, and through a top-down camera - a stylistic choice that leads up to a brilliant and eerie payoff at game’s end.

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An Ordinary Death#

by methodactor

Ah, the classic text adventure. We can’t help but feel nostalgic for the days of plundering dungeons and slaying beasts with nothing but words and wit. Fortunately, methodactor has us covered in Dreams. Scrolling out in glowing green-yellow phosphor across a CRT screen is a branching narrative that tasks you with navigating what is perhaps the most dangerous place of all: your own house. A series of morbidly hilarious pratfalls follows, as you try to dodge homicidal deodorant and other mundane sources of certain death, relying on your memory - and occasionally a little bit of luck - to minimise your risk of impalement, electrocution, and more. It’s silly, but also weirdly sobering: made for the YOLO Jam, this uphill battle against mortality does serve to remind us that you do, indeed, only live once.

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Chaos At Check-in#

by Wargarble

This isn’t the first time a Wargarble piece has featured in the Dreamview Weekly Roundup, nor will it be the last. Their unique style makes for mesmerising art pieces: we always find ourselves wondering about the strange and unusual worlds and scenarios they depict. Chaos At Check-in is no exception. Under cold sepiatone light, a crowd scrambles towards an unseen goal (check-in?), furniture upturned and errant papers flying, as Plasticine-faced desk drones watch on in horror. What is this place? And what exactly is the great rush here?

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"Now" by SaucelessOne - Official Music Video

by spiYdrz, SaucelessOne and slayassassin73

Talented musician SaucelessOne writes, sings and produces an understated indie hit for the ages in Now. Thanks to SaucelessOne’s gorgeous and distinct vocal tone, falsetto harmonies and some clean guitars treated to plenty of compression and reverb by slayassassin73, it honestly wouldn’t sound out of place on a The 1975 or Tame Impala record. Around it, spiYdrz crafts a music video of shifting shapes and mirrors that looks like it’s playing out inside the band’s kaleidoscopic heads - a bizarrely ideal fit for a tune about opening your eyes to the beauty of the here and now.

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Making The Leap#

by Keenardo

Rare is the dream that makes us cry. Joining the club right alongside Drag Flower 2 The Exit is Making The Leap, an interactive experience that makes its point not through fancy graphics or complicated systems, but through a simple mechanic, clever sound design and some carefully chosen words. Ahead of your character is a vast gap, a platform at the other end; the implication is that you must jump across it, but it seems obvious that you won’t be able to, a suspicion confirmed by the larger puppets in the background clearing it with ease. The journey of self-discovery through patience that unfolds is brief, but incredibly touching. Keenardo created this for the Autistica jam, and its message will undoubtedly resonate with autistic players - but, as we discover for ourselves, Making The Leap’s central theme may well speak to a much larger audience.

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Want an easy way to view all of these creations in one convenient collection? Check out the playable version of this week’s Dreamview Weekly Roundup right here in Dreams!