Over the past couple of years, Atlus has become no stranger to publishing the weirder and atypical titles to come out of games development houses. Who could have forgotten the medievally destructive Rock of Ages a handful of years back, the Art Noveau-inspired Abyss Odyssey, or the procedurally generated horror journey Daylight. However, the big catch with these games was never really the gameplay, and more or less the great premises behind them. Yet, Atlus has become a lot more focused in the past year. Does the sidescrolling Daydreamer: Awakened Edition match this, or simply falter to the back? Here’s our critique.
Gameplay:
On the surface, Daydreamer is a platformer with a couple of twists. You can implement different animals to get you through some tougher obstacles, and you can customize a loadout-like arsenal to kill less friendlier creatures. The game is undeniably fast and fresh due to this and other less interactive reasons, causing some nitpicks to fall underneath a general perception. These include but are not limited to, a lack of challenge and confusing mechanics early on, and the occasional floaty jump.
Story & Design:
In some game genres, bad controls do not suffer the gameplay when the main ideas are successful enough. Platformers take this in a different direction, and make sure your sense of fluidity is not only essential, but matches with how you are orchestrating your next act. Thankfully, Daydreamer does not struggle with this. Blaming the game wasn’t a common scenario, causing less frustration during the drawn-out checkpoints. The concept is a bit dated, but as stated before, the new ideas don’t create this notion.
Presentation/ Visuals & Audio:
I speculate that the art style in Daydreamer will be very divisive, but after a couple minutes of playing the game, it does feel right at home. This is also implemented greatly into the level design, and I would have liked to see more of it, if the game wasn’t so short. (People with higher platformer expertise could take an hour, at most)
Conclusion:
Daydreamer: Awakened Edition is a thrilling, albeit compressed sidescrolling venture. It’s good ideas don’t screw around and make a game that could have been written off as creepy and clumsy, so much more. It’s not perfect, but it’s a game we need in this otherwise disappointing summer lineup.
Daydreamer: Awakened Edition gets a 8/10 (Very Good)
We’d like to thank Atlus for giving us a code!
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