Hands On: Dreams Is Going to Be a Game of the Year Candidate

Media Molecule’s showing a compilation of mini-games that it’s made in Dreams here at EGX 2018, and the highest compliment we can pay them is that many of them would comfortably hang in the indie stand. We don’t even need to get hands on time with the package’s impressive and comprehensive creation suite to realise that the Guildford developer’s been cooking something scarily special here.

The mini-games are vibrant and varied, ranging from arcade shooters to visual novels. The latter, a classic white-on-black text adventure, tells the tale of an ordinary teenager who arrives at an extraordinary house party; beware what you find in the attic. It’s brilliant, and an example of just how powerful the title’s game making suite is. Within seconds of completing the visual novel, you can be playing as a hammer smashing light bulbs in a madcap co-op experience.

There’s also an intergalactic dogfighting game, complete with shifting perspective so you can play in third-person or first-person, and a Comix Zone-style side-scroller that seamlessly switches dimensions as a giant pencil arrives on the screen and sketches in new scenery. Perhaps the “weakest” of the lot is a Defender-inspired arcade shmup, which didn’t feel as polished as the other options. Oh well, it’s Dreams – you just quit out and try something else instead.

Perhaps most impressive of all is the taster of the title’s campaign that we got to play, which essentially sees you assuming the role of a small robot, which can send out a large energy charge. Doing this is essential to opening up new paths through the level, but there’s so much great platforming packed in here that it serves as a reminder of how good Media Molecule is at, y’know, actually making games. The fact that it’s all been built using a DualShock 4 is dizzying to say the least.

Look, we’ve seen the creation tools to death, and we already know they’re borderline award-winning in terms of their accessibility. Media Molecule looks to have made the art of creation both entertaining and genuinely collaborative, and when you consider how wildly powerful this suite is compared to LittleBigPlanet, the studio must simply be itching to get it into people’s hands. It’s not finished yet, but make no mistake: the developer’s cooking something special here. Really special.

Where do you stand on Dreams at this stage? Are you just eager to see it released, or are you happy for Media Molecule to take its time? Ask when the beta’s coming out in the comments section below.