Dreamscaper adds heart and intimacy to an action RPG roguelite

Heading into Steam Early Access today, Dreamscaper is an intriguing take on the action RPG roguelite, aiming to add a little bit of heart and intimacy to the genre. I’ve spent the past few days with the game, and I have to say, it’s pretty excellent.

 

Presented as your typical roguelite, Dreamscaper tasks you with beating a number of levels that increase in difficulty as you collect weapons and abilities that make you more powerful. With each death you will be sent back to the start again, having to accrue abilities and weapons all over again. It’s a genre that most gamers will be familiar with by this point and Dreamscaper doesn’t do anything outside of the established template in this regard.

What makes Dreamscaper interesting is the time spent outside of combat. While sleeping, Cassidy fights her deep subconscious, taking on her worst fears. When you wake up, Dreamscaper takes on a very different tone as players are able to travel to a number of locations and build relationships within Cassidy’s social circle. Relationship levels can be built by chatting with friends or providing them with gifts, which in turn unlocks new abilities and buffs to use in the dreamworld. It’s similar to Persona 5’s Confidant system, but I actually feel it works better here.

The unlocks in Persona 5 were typically stat buffs or upgrades for pre-existing items, Dreamscaper empowers you to build these relationships by dangling the carrot of new weapons and abilities. For instance, if I spoke to one character enough times I could unlock the Breaker Sword which is one of the best early game weapons available. This reward system makes the relationship building feel just as important as the combat itself.

Combat sits somewhere between old top-down action RPG titles and recent Soulslike games. Players are able to attack up close and at range with the need to guard, parry and dodge to avoid taking damage. Each new level ramps up the difficulty, with a boss to beat at the end before you are able to progress. Cassidy starts each playthrough with a randomised weapon, meaning you have to adapt to the different playstyles presented by weapons. I quite enjoyed not being able to rely solely on one type of build to get me through the game, and it encouraged me to experiment more with Dreamscaper’s systems.

There are a number of combat challenges and puzzles to find throughout Dreamscaper’s procedurally generated levels. These rooms help break up the repetition of fighting enemies by introducing challenges that force you to fight in a specific way. Beat the challenge or solve the puzzle and you earn yourself an additional weapon or ability to equip. It’s these little touches that make Dreamscaper enjoyable, providing just enough variety across its levels to ensure repetition doesn’t set in.

Dreamscaper’s cartoony visuals are a perfect fit for its aesthetic, bringing Cassidy’s dreams to a life in way only highly stylised visuals could. My only real bugbear is the lack of character faces. There’s a lot of great dialogue in Dreamscaper, so having faces expressing the emotions and sentiments behind it would add a lot more depth to the relationships. Other than that, Dreamscaper is a visual delight, with colourful and dreamy visuals that perfectly match the game’s narrative direction.

My only other major issue is with enemy balancing. In the Early Access build, I found that enemy health was often set far too high, resulting in Cassidy absolutely wailing on one specific enemy for upwards of ten seconds before they fall, making them feel far too much like a damage sponge. A little bit of tweaking in this respect will absolutely remedy the issue, and I expect this will likely be fixed with community feedback in the coming months.

Dreamscaper is already off to a fantastic start, providing one of the most interesting takes on the roguelite genre we’ve seen in the last few years. I look forward to seeing what the team adds to the title and how it will look upon release. For now though, I’m going to continue dreaming my way through it’s procedurally generated levels.