After almost a year in Early Access, Afterburner Studios are ready to launch their subconscious roguelike dreamscaper. Designed with two play styles in mind, this action title follows Cassidy, a young woman who has to make new relationships and face the big world that haunts her while awake. .
The double combination of play styles gives this roguelike a more personal and poignant touch while also providing a captivating take on the genre’s action. While she is awake, Cassidy can explore various locations in the real world. This part is not a roguelike and just allows you to use some resources gathered during the Night Owl part to unlock upgrades and new items to ease the load during the clear hours. The waking world is also used to interact with other characters so Cassidy can get closer and closer to them and unlock more helpful upgrades in the roguelike sections. These conversations are also one of the main ways Dreamscaper develops its story, and he manages to create a colorful portrayal of the cast, which is particularly impressive since the character models are actually faceless.
But since this is a roguelike, lucid moments are just one side of everything on offer. Most dreamscapers take you through dreams in Cassidy’s subconscious, where she battles various mystical beings associated with negative emotions. A traditional roguelike from start to finish, this part of the title features a randomly generated map that requires players to clear rooms full of different types of enemies in order to acquire new equipment and resources. There’s not much that sets Dreamscaper apart from the others in this regard, other than its ambient design, which draws on reflections from experiences from Cassidy’s past. In fact, this is the other main form in which the story is expressed, as certain interactive objects are randomly placed in these sections that delve deeper into the protagonist’s memories.
When we think of roguelikes today, Hades is one of the most important references of the moment. While Dreamscaper has notable aspects, particularly in its world design and how it conveys its story, the action doesn’t do the Supergiant title justice. In general, the fight here is strategic rather than fast-paced, and will get you rolling and blocking no matter how much offensive you land. Unlike a murder-focused roguelike, Dreamscaper is also much slower in fighting stance. There’s a certain amount of leniency here depending on the weapon you’re using, but most of the time the attacks are a bit slow and enemies don’t tend to defend themselves too well as they are stunned for a moment until they recover if you give them one Blow.
This design style is far from bad, but it does result in the title playing much slower and clearing out much of the fighting chaos that is almost a staple of the genre. In fact, much of the combat is based on defeating 4-6 enemies per room, many of which are immobile turrets that hurl projectiles at you from a distance. If you compare this again to the frenzied action of Hades, you may understand how much he lacks intensity, even though combat requires skill to win and survive.
Dreamscaper also offers a variety of boss encounters at the end of each floor in the roguelike area, and while these have unique mechanics, they are never quite challenging enough as we’re used to with this genre. Most of the time I personally died on this game was from chip damage that I couldn’t heal, kind of slow burn, so to speak, which is easier to deal with when you make improvements in the conscious world.
Speaking of upgrades, purchasing them is as simple as spending a variety of coins, including inspiration and determination, in places in the conscious world. Upgrades can be as simple as increasing Cassidy’s health or damage against bosses by a percentage for each rank, or they could even boil down to unlocking new rooms on each of the title’s different floors. The new rooms can come from puzzle encounters that reward equipment or healing springs, and each must be unlocked on their respective floor. making it easier to survive a little longer with each attempt.
On the whole, Dreamscaper is a pretty competent roguelike. Despite its slow struggle, Afterburner has given us an experience with many possibilities that will not stop us entertaining us, be it in the waking world or in the dream world. I still firmly believe that the greatest bulwark of this game is how it explores the relationships between the protagonist and the people she meets, and how that, in turn, is directly related to the villainous experience. However, there’s still plenty of variety left in everything it suggests, enough to provide hours of fun without feeling stressful or unsatisfactory, which is a problem that the genre’s often unrewarded nature often causes.
