There’s an argument about whether games are art, and I’m a firm believer that they are. Art isn’t for everyone, and is in the eye of the beholder. Nowhere in 2025 have I experienced a game that could be described more as “artsy” and “not for everyone” than Dreams of Another. This is Q-Games’ latest release, made by Baiyon of Pixeljunk 4am fame. Using Cloud Point Technology, this game looks absolutely beautiful at times, and it certainly has a unique character and personality. The actual gameplay is quite hit and miss, but this is an experience first, a gameplay-focused game second.
Dreams of Another has you play as The Man in Pyjamas. You’ll be asleep for most of the game, and the game is structured around dream scenes. Each one ends with you back in bed, at the start menu again, which took me a while to get used to! These dreams initially seem quite disconnected, and they are chopped up in a way that has you moving from an ocean floor to a fairground to an art gallery and other unusual places. Along for the ride is an army man, who you start the game as. He didn’t have the guts to pull the trigger on his enemy and paid the ultimate price. He’ll act as your narrative confidante and also an ammo replenishment and upgrade shop. He is central to the theme that Dreams of Another is desperate to explore, and that is that there is no creation with destruction.
This brings us to the main gameplay loop of Dreams of Another and its unique graphical art style. Every environment is built on Cloud Point Technology and requires shooting to pull the clouded points together to create a whole. For example, a building will look like a hazy wall of glistening orbs until you shoot it, and a mosaic wall starts to form. The whole world is like this, and whilst you can ignore most of the world if you want, a large portion of the story, side-stories, discoveries (called sentiments) and character conversations rely on you shooting everything into creation again. Initially, I found this quite of the same level of satisfaction as Powerwash Simulator. Instead of cleaning, we’re creating. Dreams of Another did wear me down over time, though, as the constant noise of each shot got on my nerves, and I revisited the same settings constantly across the 6-8 hour runtime, finding them broken after I’d fixed them.
Once created, various objects can then talk to you about their experiences of life. Letterboxes are angry about having their mouths stuffed with letters. Vending machines feel used by humans. Cherubs offer conflicting riddles of wisdom. They do so with stilted voice acting, but they take place as you play. Where the stilted, slow, overblown voice acting hits at its oddest is in the cut scenes. Everyone moves at snail’s pace, but speaks like they want to emphasise and perform every syllable as if it’s either their last, or they are asleep. I’m reminded of Deadly Premonition. It is a bizarre performance, but it’s a consistently bizarre performance across the whole game.
Whilst the gameplay is largely a “shoot everything”, there are moments where objects get upset or angry and their aura takes off into the sky or to run around the environment like a boss battle. Some will just need shooting to calm them down, whereas others will have hot spots to aim for. Using your rifle, grenades, or missiles, you can take them out. Some of these bosses look genuinely great and have interesting ideas, but they also have no consequence for failing, as you cannot die or lose. Shooting is simplified (for the better) in Dreams of Another, which means nothing is difficult. It also highlights that whilst we have graphical innovation, we don’t have gameplay innovation. Shoot everything in the environment is difficult to keep interesting for 6 hours…
I played the game in standard mode, but a VR mode is available. I can imagine it being quite trippy, but having seen some footage, it’s quite rigid about how you navigate around the game and interact with objects. Perhaps the flat version is best.
Artistically, Dreams of Another is pretentious… but so am I, so this suited me well! It wrestles with big life questions in a very convoluted way. Did it always make sense and land its point? No. Did it make me think? Absolutely. I don’t want to go into the details too much, as the thought-provoking story and narrative will be unique to you and your lived situation. The story does work as a rallying cry to take charge and direct your life. Whether you are a tiny fish in a big ocean, or an artist wondering if a robot replicating your life’s work makes your life meaningless, you should take charge of your own dreams and chase them.
Uneven, wildly esoteric, and difficult to recommend to a casual audience, Dreams of Another is marmite. I can understand those who think this is a 1 out of 10 bonfire. I can also understand those who’ll rave about its unique takes on the world and its visual appeal. There’s not another game out there like this, and perhaps that was the point all along.
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