Mon 23 Jan 2012
The Dream Machine: Chapter 3 – REVIEW
Posted by Jan Jacob Mekes under Indie, Reviews
[6] Comments
It’s taken a while, but after a few months, the third chapter of The Dream Machine is upon us. After getting reacquainted with the controls (not that they’re very complicated, but what few controls there were I’d forgotten), I was soon exploring this wonderful dream world again. The first two chapters impressed with their very atmospheric handmade sets. Can this chapter do the same?
Just a few minutes in, I remembered what most attracted me to this universe. It wasn’t so much the graphics, no matter how attractive they are, but rather the whole idea behind the game. Cockroach Inc have constructed this amazing dream world, where everything seems to be laced with symbology.
The showpiece in this chapter is the premise: Victor finds himself in one of Alicia’s recurring dreams. He’s one of the crew members (all essentially Victor clones) aboard a cruise ship who serve the great captain, Alicia. It’s interesting to see how all the Victors differ from each other, hinting at the different ways in which Alicia thinks of her husband and projects him in her mind (or are they Victor’s own projections?). It’s clever, but subtle enough to work.
If anything, the cruise ship absorbs a bit too much of the limelight. Most of the game takes place there, and while generally quite enjoyable, some of the puzzles make it a bit of a hit and miss experience. Especially some of the earlier quests, which you need to complete to rise through the ranks, can be a bit tedious and seem to serve only to lengthen the game.
Later on things get more interesting however, when you are assigned to do some detective work. It’s pretty fun to uncover the supposed conspiracy aboard by interrogating the various Victors and playing some nasty but entertaining pranks on fellow crew members. I only wish there would have been some more sleuthing involved.
During the course of this investigation, you’ll stumble upon some evidence showing that the game’s makers haven’t just dedicated a lot of time and energy to the graphics, but also to the story. There are several books and documents to be found in the game, all featuring some non-essential information that serves to give the game world more flavour. It’s good to see such an amount of dedication given to all aspects of the game world.
When you’ve concluded your investigation, you’ll open up a can of worms that’s quite nasty. You’ll immediately understand what I’m talking about when you get to that point in the game. That particular turning point is also a rather splendid change in atmosphere. From the sunny and quite pleasant decks of the cruise ship, you suddenly end up in an eerie and unsettling décor. Sets like this (even with its almost disappointingly straightforward puzzle) show what a fabulous range of emotions The Dream Machine scenes can evoke.
It’s a promising conclusion to the third chapter, which the next one will hopefully build on. I wouldn’t mind seeing a bit more of that creepy atmosphere, which works surprisingly well with these clay figures. I also hope the puzzles will be solid across the board, instead of having some good puzzles intermixed with others that were a bit below par, because that’s ultimately the only real weakness of this short but sweet offering.
Jan’s Score: 4 out of 5 starks
Note: The first chapter is free to play on the official website. The other 4 chapters can be purchased there.
After playing first episode, I was pretty sure to purchase full game. Concept is very interesting, exploring an oneiric narrative is a fantastic way to make an adventure game, I like so much story and atmosphere, but, actually is a big but, I’m not sure about puzzles, about adventure puzzles. In fact, puzzles of first episode are not integrated in story, you can solve every puzzle even if you don’t know the story, that’s great for first scene because of its particular narration, but don’t for the others, and to be honest, they aren’t funny, only make it longer. I expected an evolution for next episodes but videos of chapters 2 and 3, show again that kind of puzzles, like letter one or like mechanism in bedroom; your words speak also about that. I think that is a big problem of adventure games today, the real adventure puzzles are almost missing, when I play an adventure game I want to solve interesting puzzles, integrated in story, puzzles that speak about characters, universe, story… adventure puzzles, not another kind of puzzles.
[Reply]
Anders Gustafsson Reply:
January 29th, 2012 at 8:38 pm
I just have to object to this. Say what you want about the quality of the puzzles, I won’t object. You found them too boring, too hard, too easy. Sure, no problem. But when you say that they’re not integrated in the story, well, that’s when we have a problem.
Every single puzzle is integrated in – and tell part of – the story, revealing character and back story. Some more successfully than other, I will concede, but generally none is there to just “make it longer”.
Can you point to any one puzzle that’s just there as a gate, totally removed from story, characters, setting or back story? I’m dying to know.
[Reply]
David_Holm Reply:
January 30th, 2012 at 2:49 am
Hi, Anders,
First of all I have to say, I’m speaking from Adventure Game’s point of view. I named two of this puzzles in first chapter, 1) letter, “hi, mom, look at this, can you solved it?” “sure, son, this here, and another there and…” mom don’t know a word about The Dream Machine game but can fix that immediately, so, although letter text tell you about the story, that is not integrated. It’s very easy and the only problem is interface (not completely efficient at this point), it just works like delay action (I’m sure your intention was other).
2) Circuit board, first part of puzzle is OK, you find it because of story, but then, “mom, can you…” “mmm, if I took that then that light… fuck you!, I could solve it but I’m too old to spend my time in this way”. Trial and error and after a while, you fix it, you don’t need to know anything about story and I have to say, it wasn’t funny.
Another example is searching the phone in the box. Most of puzzles are simply mechanics, click here, drag there, see what happen, trial and error. I love adventure games because you’re trying to solve situations with your mind, not with your fingers, and to solve puzzles you need to know the universe and things about story and characters, and put yourself in their shoes to can get the solution. But not in that case.
I like other parts, first scene is an amazing beginning, the story seems very interesting, it’s reveled appropriately, in little pieces, one here, another there, great atmosphere with personalities of characters, backgrounds, the story of building, music… but puzzles definitively are not good adventure games puzzles; I look for peculiarities of this art, his special narrative through puzzles. That doesn’t mean other players enjoy so much this kind of puzzles and hate adventure games puzzles.
My English is terrible, I know.
Saúdos
[Reply]
Jan Jacob Mekes Reply:
January 31st, 2012 at 1:16 pm
It’s funny you mention those puzzles, because I actually rather like puzzles like that.
The ones I found a bit questionable were the ones where you had to fetch a few glasses and put poison in the rat holes. It does serve to establish the characters a bit, and your relation to them (you’re just an errand boy to them, at least at first), but they remind me too much of the overly simplistic puzzle concepts that are often used in RPGs.
But I don’t want to linger in negativity here. I did enjoy the detective work, and the radio puzzle was very clever! I think it’s just a matter of not being able to please everyone all the time…
How’s your new project, Igor?
[Reply]
Igor Hardy Reply:
February 3rd, 2012 at 6:29 am
Thanks for asking – coming together nicely. Though I hoped to show something of it by the end of January and yet it’s still visually a little bit too rough to do that. During the last months I’ve spent a lot of time building the gameplay and some tech things for it – and those are solid.
Next week I should be able to actually get some video up here with more details.
[Reply]