Dreams is not a LittleBigPlanet sequel. On its surface, the game-engine-within-a-game-engine-running-on-proprietary-consumer-hardware is reminiscent of LittleBigPlanet and its renowned sequel. But consider for a moment that describing LittleBigPlanet purely as a tool for creativity neglects the fact that, as a tool, it was kind of janky. Even its sequels, with their expanded scope and toolsets, could not compensate for the fact that trying to create anything with more than one person usually devolved into the random bouts of deathmatch usually saved for Halo's forge mode--albeit much stupider and silly than that game ever was. Fifteen years later, LittleBigPlanet stands out because it was a fun tool to play around in and also because the atmospheric, pop-music-flavored vibes are still as immaculate as ever.
You can create experiences like that in Dreams, no doubt. But if you try to play Dreams on the basis of vibes alone, what you'll find is an exceedingly vacant and wanting experience.
Dreams understands the counter-cultural angle of LittleBigPlanet's creation tools but, in execution, is more akin to a Net Yaroze spiritual successor. Net Yaroze, for those not in the know, was a brief attempt by Sony to turn their aging PlayStation 1 hardware into a hobbyist's wet dream. It may not have had all of the bells and whistles of that professional developers were afforded at the time, but given that anyone could still make a game with it, that hardly mattered. Net Yaroze's output can charitably be described as the demo scene on a smaller, more niche scale. Those invested in putting full-3D first-person shooters on the floppy disks that Doom would have shipped on weren't concerned with pushing the limits of hardware as restrictive as the PlayStation. But those who simply wanted to know what a PlayStation could do happily sent 700 dollars to Sony in the year of our lord 1997 (I'm citing Wikipedia, and there's nothing you can do about it). In much the same way, Dreams is chock-full of demonstrations. "What if I made Fallout 4?" is a sentiment you'll find throughout its community. If Dreams were as laser-focused on its target audience as Net Yaroze was, it would likely end there. But in the vein of it being a spiritual successor, those demos exist to the extent that they do in part because Dreams is more than just an accessible variant of the past. A fine line is walked between accessibility and depth. Custom music, for example, feels less like the gimmick it was in LittleBigPlanet 2, and more like a fully-fledged feature. It may not be the copy of MTV Music Maker that Jim Guthrie composed Morning Noon Night on, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone in Guthrie's elk found Dreams to be of great use. The end result is that, alongside a multitude of tech demos, Dreams is also filled to the brim with the kinds of microgames you used to see on platforms like GameJolt whenever a developer was bored or participated in a game jam. There isn't a sense that there's a broader market that these creators need to work towards; Dreams strips the bullshit away from prestige indie games and lets indies be fucking indies again.
And it's dying. It's behind a paywall, there's a fairly steep learning curve so no one's really made the great American Dreams creation yet, it never got ported to PC, and it is no longer a priority of Media Molecule's. It wouldn't surprise me if the community on this is only slightly more active than the five remaining people who play LittleBigPlanet 3. And that's a shame! Dreams deserved waaaay better. I don't know if I can recommend it in its current state, but for what it once represented, it was great.
You can create experiences like that in Dreams, no doubt. But if you try to play Dreams on the basis of vibes alone, what you'll find is an exceedingly vacant and wanting experience.
Dreams understands the counter-cultural angle of LittleBigPlanet's creation tools but, in execution, is more akin to a Net Yaroze spiritual successor. Net Yaroze, for those not in the know, was a brief attempt by Sony to turn their aging PlayStation 1 hardware into a hobbyist's wet dream. It may not have had all of the bells and whistles of that professional developers were afforded at the time, but given that anyone could still make a game with it, that hardly mattered. Net Yaroze's output can charitably be described as the demo scene on a smaller, more niche scale. Those invested in putting full-3D first-person shooters on the floppy disks that Doom would have shipped on weren't concerned with pushing the limits of hardware as restrictive as the PlayStation. But those who simply wanted to know what a PlayStation could do happily sent 700 dollars to Sony in the year of our lord 1997 (I'm citing Wikipedia, and there's nothing you can do about it). In much the same way, Dreams is chock-full of demonstrations. "What if I made Fallout 4?" is a sentiment you'll find throughout its community. If Dreams were as laser-focused on its target audience as Net Yaroze was, it would likely end there. But in the vein of it being a spiritual successor, those demos exist to the extent that they do in part because Dreams is more than just an accessible variant of the past. A fine line is walked between accessibility and depth. Custom music, for example, feels less like the gimmick it was in LittleBigPlanet 2, and more like a fully-fledged feature. It may not be the copy of MTV Music Maker that Jim Guthrie composed Morning Noon Night on, but I wouldn't be surprised if someone in Guthrie's elk found Dreams to be of great use. The end result is that, alongside a multitude of tech demos, Dreams is also filled to the brim with the kinds of microgames you used to see on platforms like GameJolt whenever a developer was bored or participated in a game jam. There isn't a sense that there's a broader market that these creators need to work towards; Dreams strips the bullshit away from prestige indie games and lets indies be fucking indies again.
And it's dying. It's behind a paywall, there's a fairly steep learning curve so no one's really made the great American Dreams creation yet, it never got ported to PC, and it is no longer a priority of Media Molecule's. It wouldn't surprise me if the community on this is only slightly more active than the five remaining people who play LittleBigPlanet 3. And that's a shame! Dreams deserved waaaay better. I don't know if I can recommend it in its current state, but for what it once represented, it was great.
Yultimona
7 months ago