Day Twelve

• Game: Dreaming Sarah
• Source: Indie Royale's The Mystery Bundle 2
• Start: 12/12

I quite like Dreaming Sarah. I suppose I should append "so far" to that, because the game appears to be an Early Access game of the "in-progress variety": rather than everything being buggy and broken with the merest hints of what a finished competent product might be, the game is fairly structurally sound; it just doesn't seem to end right now. Or maybe it does, but I have no way of knowing for sure without looking up the ending (or a lack thereof) without spoiling the game's puzzles. My fault for loading up yet another one of these Early Access types for this feature. I'll stick this in the vault too, I guess. (Though it does strike me as odd that, even though it's Early Access, it has achievements and Steam trading cards enabled. I suppose these days those things are just good promotion and worth interrupting one's dev cycle to implement. As is the decision to give away the game's soundtrack to early adopters. This is how you do Early Access right, folks.)

The game is a trippy 2D pixel platformer that does a few of the usual platforming things (there's a scenario where you have to outrun a lava flow, and one where you have to float down a hole where the walls are lined with spikes), but it's far more skewed towards "adventure game" than "platformer". You run and jump around, investigating new areas, solving the occasional environmental puzzle and obtaining new items. These items can be one of two things: simple inventory items that you need to hand off to the right NPC to make progress, or an item that you can toggle that affects the world in some way. For instance, a pair of spectacles that allow you to see hidden doors, or an umbrella that allows you to float like Princess Peach. Obtaining these items and using them in the right situations gets you further along, and the game eventually starts tipping its hand as to who Sarah is and why she's in some bizarro dreamworld. (Hint: she's dreaming.)

I've read that this game is inspired by a far more unsettling doujin game named Yume Nikki, which has a similar theme of a young girl trapped in a literal nightmare, and I'd be happy to see what Dreaming Sarah is like with a bit more polish and, well, an actual conclusion. Like another recent game with similar gameplay and a similarly pixelly visual style, last year's Finding Teddy, it's a relaxed and breezy adventure game that's more concerned with setting an atmosphere than thrills. A fine tonic for the brash and loud zombie nonsense that Steam's become known for. I'll be keeping an eye on this one for when it hits v1.0.

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