Dreamview Weekly Roundup #110

Think of the Dreamiverse like a big soup. It’s full of flavour. It’s got endless nuggets of deliciousness bobbing around in it. And it’s a delight to travel through. Hop on in! Have a swim about.

Sure, it couldn’t be safely served in any reputable restaurant, but you’re never bored looking at it. It’s a soup for the mind! At least, that’s what we tell the health inspectors when they come a-knocking. Before pushing them in.

Anyway, yes. Art soup. Here are five steamy portions of creative goodness, ladled directly from Dreams into the mouth of your eyes. Bon appetit!

Take The Plunge 2#

by IansaneArtist and animeboy0021

Estimated playtime: 5 mins

Why walk between different dimensions when you could cannonball into them? That’s the real magic behind the ‘Take The Plunge’ art showcases. Yes, the environments they feature are lavishly realistic, sunlight glittering along the edges of waves, glancing off palm fronds and gilding snow-covered mountains. But it’s how you move between them that provides the biggest rush; you must jump from cliffs into pools of water below, which will miraculously spit you out into the next wildly different scene.

This gives you a natural, yet clear objective marker in each space - when you’re ready to explore another scene, you simply look for the telltale glint of water (it has to be said that Take The Plunge 2’s pathfinding is a little trickier than the first instalment). But it’s also a multisensory, highly satisfactory action, with the wind in your ears on the way down, the water resistance and an almighty splash sound signalling your exit. We’d love to see more creators let players enter very different scenes via a dramatic and satisfying transition mechanic - a strength of Dreams is being able to hop between different art styles in a flash. Or, indeed, a splash.

LAST RUNNING MAN#

by Gianni_no_Mitaka

Estimated runtime: 5 mins

Gianni_no_Mitaka likes to approach audiovisuals from alternative angles - and with this lightly interactive music video, you can too, thanks to a number of selectable cameras. The animation is simple, but evocative: an astronaut doggedly running on a 2001-esque wheel-shaped spaceship, the passing lights of the consoles illuminating his helmet. A metal soundtrack thrumming with dramatic drums, wailing electric guitars and careful pauses helps build a sense of impending doom - or perhaps time counting down - as our hero runs desperately in place, escaping nothing and reaching nothing. Interestingly, this piece doesn’t finish until you exit the creation: once the music track runs out, the lights go out too, but the last running man keeps running. It’s a poetic piece that seems to be posing a question: is the end of the world really so scary, when the alternative is no end at all?

Chicken, Chicken… UFOs!?!#

by UncleM_Games

Estimated playtime: Replayable

A single image is in our minds while playing this ambidextrous high-score game: that meme of Spongebob Squarepants reading two pages at the same time. You know the one. Started as part of Lyzurly's Hyper Game Dev one-hour jam, it goes like this: left stick controls left chicken. Right stick controls right chicken. UFOs try to abduct chickens (bad). Collectable worms provide energy to keep chickens alive (good). Chickens keep popping out babies, which need their parents not to be abducted to avoid becoming victims of neglect (indictable offence). All of these factors combine to create a beam-dodging, worm-gobbling challenge that will leave you cross-eyed and laughing in your quest to be the cock of the walk.

BURNING LIKE THE SUN#

by NAMORDE_

Estimated runtime: 2 mins

Finishing stuff isn’t everything. (Ever heard of the hacker/art collective SOFA? Their mantra is Start Often, Finish rArely, and it’s all about keeping on doing stuff - not holding yourself back from making new things just because other things aren’t complete!) Occasionally, however, there’s art in the world that you’re so glad reached its final destination. For us, one of these things is BURNING LIKE THE SUN, a psychedelic track in which synths wind their way around punch kick drums, harmonising together and breaking apart intermittently. The creation description explains this particular piece has undergone plenty of revisions, but that its creator is “glad [they] stuck with this one”. We are, too: the SOFA is comfy and all, but this is testament to the benefits that can come from getting up off the couch once in a while.

Gourdwick’s Neon Things#

by Gourdwick

Estimated playtime: N/A

We must be at least part-moth, because there’s something about neon lights that really tickles our thorax. (If you’ve never seen pictures of the magical God’s Own Junkyard in London, we must insist you search it up immediately.) This collection of decorative sculpts is a treasure trove of luminescence: from classic arrow-pierced hearts and rainbows, to spooky creatures and seasonal symbols, and a whole alphabet with which you can spell out signs, it’s got everything you need to light up your Dreams-made cities, dive bars and synthwave scenes. Us, though? We’re thinking of spending our Friday night dancing around them in circles while bashing our face into the occasional fave. Bliss!

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

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