Dream:scape runs on the Unreal Engine. You’d think this means it would be great, and up to a certain point it is.

Dream:scape ($1.99)

“Take on the persona of Wilson, a man caught in the limbo between life and death, reconstructing his past via the Dreamscape of his memories. Find the tools to overcome the Guardians of Memory, revealing buried secrets and shedding new light on a decades-old mystery.”

Presentation

Playing it on the iPad 2, I had a steady framerate, but with the game looked a bit messy. I tried it out on the iPhone 4 briefly to see how it looked on that, and it definitely looked a lot better on the retina display.

Visuals apart though, the game’s sound is absolutely fantastic. If you’re playing it, you MUST play it with headphones on. The sound and music fit perfectly with the eery atmosphere in the game, and even the voice acting is great.

Controls

Controls is where the game starts to fall apart. Most of the game consists mostly of walking around, with controls similar to Epic Citadel, but improved. That’s not the problem. The problem comes when there’s an action sequence in the game.

Without giving much away, it involves swiping on screen. The game doesn’t recognize large swipes, so short and sharp gestures are the only thing you can do and hope the game registers.

Gameplay

When I say dream:scape is an interactive story, it’s because that’s what it really is. You play as Wilson, a coma patient who has a chance to go back and explore his memories, and discover a secret that’s been with him his whole life.

At the beginning of the game, you are given a blank diary with nothing other than a map of the dreamscape. As you go to important places, voices from the past will give you the backstory of that place. After that you can open up the diary to the page of that location to get a more detailed account from Wilson’s perspective. All these places will give you pieces of the secret.

That’s just it though, the game consists mostly of walking through the dreamscape, and a lot of backtracking. To unlock some places you’ll need a special item sometimes. A lot of times I would see an item I knew would be important, but you can’t pick it up or anything until the moment it’s needed.

Wherever that is, you have to walk back to wherever that item was to then pick it up. As mentioned above, the few action sequences in the game aren’t of much use either, since they just involve swiping a few times on screen, and the game sometimes doesn’t even register those.

Conclusion

I wanted to love dream:scape, honestly. Since I first saw the trailer for the game, I was excited for it. Now that I’ve played through it though, I’m a much less excited than I was at the beginning.

Backtracking and walking around made the game feel a bit boring at times, despite how good the story and sound was. You’ll have to decide for yourself if you want to wad through the gameplay for the experience.

Editor’s Note: As opposed to most games/apps reviewed on the site through a free promocode, this game was purchased using the site’s funds.