Waking up from My (Kid’s) Experience with Dreams (Playstation 4 Game Review)

Dreams is the latest experience from Media Molecule, the award-winning creators of LittleBigPlanet. Described as “an ever-expanding game universe — exclusive to PS4 — where you explore, experience and play in the limitless imagination of players around the world,” Dreams is actually much more than a game; it’s a game engine — an experience creation platform, a set of tools players can use to create and share games, music videos, animations, and all kinds of other interactive art experiences.

Dreams is unique in its design as a way for players/creators to unleash their creativity, allowing them to bring ideas to life with innovative, easy-to-use tools and mechanics that require NO CODE and can result in some truly impressive interactive experiences. Anything created in Dreams shared or remixed to be used in the creations of other “dreamers.”

Dreamers have the option of Dream Surfing, where players can find experiences and assets made by others, or Dream Shaping, where they can create their own. There are other modes but these are the two main experiences. There are many different tools available to dream shapers (shaping, scaling, movement, drawing/painting, etc.) to design their experiences and the logic and mechanics that drive them. There are a number of tutorials to give new users an introduction to these tools.

Dreams was published in February 2020, but I’d been reading about it for a while before then. I didn’t participate in the beta, nor did I try the demo, which, in hindsight, would have been the smart play, though time will tell. What really caught my attention was the incredible stuff people were making in Dreams, which was all over YouTube. I couldn’t believe the examples I was seeing were created without code.

We had just begun our new life, sequestered at home thanks to COVID-19. My 6yo son is a creative, intelligent, and easily distracted boy and it occurred to me that Dreams could be an excellent outlet for him. He already plays video games, so I was curious to know if he’d be able to get a handle on the design tools in Dreams, so I bought it for him.

In Dreams, players control an “imp” used to interact with the platform’s world and interface, much like a mouse cursor, but cuter. The imp can also “possess” other objects (like characters or vehicles) allowing the player to control them. My son named his green imp Tortilla. The imp is controlled by using the DualShock 4 motion controls and/or analogue joysticks (PlayStation Move controllers can also be used). And this is where, in my own use of Dreams, I ran into trouble from the start.

First off, I am not a particularly visually-oriented person (when it comes to learning styles), however, it was the motion control scheme within a 3D space that I just had a lot of difficulty grasping. My son seemed more capable there, but it quickly became apparent that the design toolset, as “intuitive” as it was billed, was still a bit beyond him (and clearly beyond me). Getting into practice with the tools has been described as similar to learning a musical instrument — another thing I never had the skill or at least patience for.

We tried getting through the tutorials. I was frustrated quickly. I couldn’t understand the controls and quickly found the whole experience somewhat tedious. To my son’s credit, he was more determined than I but eventually he left Dream Shaping behind for Dream Surfing. He played through “Art’s Dream”, a story/campaign mode, which takes a couple of hours to complete and provides an effective demonstration of what can be done in Dreams (including modelling, animation, level design, sound design, storytelling) and then started finding all kinds of other games to play.

So, at least for now, our experience in Dreams is limited to exploring the dreams of others, rather than creating our own, but my son still loves to play the games and he’s even ducked back into Dream Shaping once or twice. I hope his time Dream Surfing will inspire him to return to trying to build on his own. I look forward to sharing his dreams someday.