May 13th, 2008 by PCG

Game Review: Dream Chronicles

Frequently, descriptions accompanying new games include a good dose of hyperbole, exaggerated promises and more. Phrases like "stunning artwork, enveloping music and prose worthy of the masters" are spun by marketing mavens you'd swear have never even seen the title they're hawking. On occasion, however, the "overstated" is actually true.

That's the case with Dream Chronicles from KatGames and PlayFirst. In this instance, "gorgeous Art Nouveau artwork, mesmerizing music and a gripping storyline" accurately illustrate the experience that lies ahead.

So, what is Dream Chronicles? It's best described as a casual cousin to epic, hard-core adventures like Myst and Uru. A mix of fantasy and reality, its hypnotic dreamland engages you in a larger-than-life quest, a mystery that needs to be solved one puzzle at a time as the story unfolds around you.

Lilith, Fairy Queen of Dreams, has imprisoned the hamlet of Wish under a slumber spell affecting everyone but you, a mortal named Faye. Your task is to locate Fidget, your missing husband, banish the enchantment cast by Lilith and wake your daughter, Lyra, reuniting your family in the process. But, all you have to start with is a diary left by Fidget detailing his secret past and the path to be followed. Why did Lilith cast this spell? What happened to Fidget? What's transpired in years past? These are some of the questions you need to unravel.

In traditional adventure form, your quest in Dream Chronicles is accomplished location by location. Each scene, 32 in all, incorporates one or more puzzles to be solved, with thorough investigation crucial to advancing. Some objects are quite easy to spot while others are more subtle and require greater scrutiny (important objects "glint" after a while to help in locating them). Doors, drawers, buttons, switches, wall hangings, toys, books, keys, crystals and other items of various shapes and sizes all come into play.

Interaction is simple. Clicking items place them in your inventory at the bottom of the screen. Once there, you can use them on other objects and combine them to solve the various conundrums encountered. However, unlike most hard-core adventures, you never lug around any unnecessary inventory items here. All objects needed for a puzzle's solution are found and used in the same scene. Solve the poser at hand and you unlock the "door" to the next location.

Dream Chronicles Game is a mixture of adventure, find and seek and puzzle games. While it appears to be a chick game, I am betting that guys will be playing it on the sly because it is at the cutting edge of arcade games. This will probably be a classic! Kids and adults alike will be able to play, so try this one at home, folks.

The line between reality and fantasy fades in the Dream Chronicles!

Surreal puzzles and intricate clues come alive right in front of you the Dream Chronicles!

In Dream Chronicles you wake to find your husband missing and your daughter and the entire town under a sleeping spell. Your surroundings seem strangely surreal and otherworldly and there are puzzles and clues scattered throughout town like breadcrumbs.

Dream Chronicles lets you explore 18 Environments!

Dream Chronicles is a sensual delight, an intellectual challenge, and a very engaging twist on adventure, seek-and-find and puzzle games. It's been compared to Myst and Uru, and whilst it's certainly not as demanding as those mainstream titles, I found Dream Chronicles even more enjoyable.

You play Faye, who has a dream in which Lilith, the Fairy Queen of Dreams casts a sleep spell over the kingdom. When you awaken, you find that your husband has been kidnapped by Lilith and your child is overcome by the sleep spell. You must find your way to Lilith's domain and free your husband to defeat Lilith and lift the spell. To do this, you must solve puzzles that Lilith has left in your way to prevent you from following her. In addition, you can increase your score by collecting Dream Jewels, which are subtly strewn through each scene.

The whole game covers a wide range of game types, including adventure/RPG, jigsaw, seek-and-find, and a final hurdle that looks alarmingly like the graduate aptitude tests I've been doing recently. You are given hints as to how to proceed, and some brief instruction, but you need to work out what is actually required yourself. (I'm not telling—that would ruin it!) There are walkthroughs available on the web, but they are only useful for finding out what has to be done—the locations of the things you have to find change in each game.

Dream Chronicles does what a casual game of its nature is supposed to do: provide a few hours of entertainment as it transports you into a magical world of puzzles. Set in a fairy-tale environment, the story unfolds chapter by chapter, but before you know it, it's already over.

You take on the role of Faye, a young woman who, at the beginning of the game, is dreaming. But when she wakes up from her peculiar dream, her husband, Fidget, is gone. Her daughter, Lyra, is in a deep enchanted slumber, and it's up to you to follow Fidget's clues to break the spell and to save your husband. The story unravels as you continue on to each level. You'll learn a lot more about your in-laws than you would care to ever know.

Similar to many adventures that have come before, all you need is a mouse to point and click. Clicking on items that you can't pick up will give you a brief description of what it is. Items that can be used will go into your inventory at the bottom of your screen. To use the items, all you need to do is click on it and then click on what you want it to interact with. The game is very simple and intuitive, so there is no need for a tutorial.

Gems are scattered throughout the game for you to collect. This adds to your score at the end. As a registered user, you can go online and compare your score to other players. It took me roughly two hours to complete the game, which seemed incredibly short. There were only a couple of puzzles on which I was stumped, but a majority of them can be easily solved through trial and error and a lot of random clicking.

Ready for a game of mystery and intrigue? PlayFirst’s new puzzler, Dream Chronicles will certainly fit the bill.

Dream Chronicles is a mystery game in which you play a woman named Faye who wakes up from a strange dream only to find that her husband, Fidget, has been taken captive by the evil Fairy Queen of Dreams, Lilith. If this premise vaguely reminds you of the classic mystery game, Myst, it’s not accidental. The main difference is that Dream Chronicles is quite a bit easier than its older cousin. In my opinion, this is a good thing, because, sadly, I never made it though Myst successfully.

Dream Chronicles guides you through a series of puzzles that take you all over a large house full of nooks, crannies, treasures and keepsakes. Lilith, who wants to steal your husband away for herself, has mixed everything up. With the guidance of Fidget’s diary, you have to put everything back in its proper place in order to open many magic doors. Finally, after navigating your way through a maze of mysteries, you end up...

Well, I won’t say more. It wouldn’t be much of a mystery if I revealed all the game’s secrets beforehand, would it?

Many of Dream Chronicles’ puzzles are matching games where you have to assemble a set of pieces from varies pieces of junk in a room and then effect repairs on something. For example, one puzzle requires that you find nuts, wheels, washers, and tools in order to repair a broken wagon.

In this hectic world we live in, many times work and appointments must come before the fun and joys in our lives, including that of getting to play videogames whenever we want. Gone are the days when we could fire up a game of our choice and spend hours toiling away – now we seem to game in stolen moments here and there. With that in mind, perhaps it is no wonder that casual games have become such a popular gaming choice (especially with women who make up the vast majority of casual game players), as casual games allow us to either jump in and get those quick fixes of gaming bliss or either play them for as long as we want when we do have the time. In honor of the casual game, we'll be bringing you a new Casual Game of the Week every Monday to help you find that fix you might be needing in your life, and this week we have: Dream Chronicles.

Though the game doesn't come out till June 12, 2007, we were lucky enough to be able to get an early copy of Dream Chronicles to present to you this early review. In Dream Chronicles, you play as a young woman named Faye, who wakes up one day to find that the Fairy Queen of Dreams – Lilith – has cast a sleeping spell over the kingdom. You wakeup only to find your husband Fidget missing, and your child under the deep sleep spell. Will you be able to get to the root of the matter, break the spell, and find your husband?

Dream Chronicles plays like Myst and a hide and seek game merged into one. It plays like Myst in regards to the static screens and puzzles you'll have to solve to advance through the game, and it plays like a hide and seek game because you have to scour the level to find all the missing objects that you need for the puzzles. The game is very linear, as you only have one set path to take throughout, so you won't have to worry about finding an item on one static screen, and then have to hold onto it for three or four down the lane. If you find an item that will go in your use try, then be assured it will be used on the same static screen you found it on.

The first big puzzle is always finding all the items you'll need, which is accomplished by searching every little inch of the screen for clickable objects. Thankfully, the process is streamlined, because instead of not knowing what could be an object you'll need and have to endless click to find it, by dragging your pointer over objects you'll see a name pop up for the object, meaning you'll either be using it or get some description about it; if you click it and can and will use it, it will fly down to your use tray. Another nice thing about the game is that if you're stuck and can't see perhaps the last item you need to find, the game will twinkle the object to let you know where to go. Yes, it's a bit of an unfair cheat, but when you've spent a ton of time looking for a tiny little something, you'll be grateful the help is there when the objects do twinkle. Another thing you'll be looking for are little dream jewels, which will net you bonus points when the game is over.