One Dreamer Review by Bigby's Gaming Hand
As a software developer who was forced to get a job that pays the bills instead of pursuing their game development dream, this hits close to home.
You don't actually go choosing the other job thinking that you'll let go of the dream of making a game.
You actually get the job thinking you'll make time to develop a game, but it never happens. Life will place obstacles and every hurdle is higher than the last. So, when I say I broke when I found out that I've let go of the dream without realizing it, believe me. And that still breaks me to this day.
Achievements:
Missable Achievements: Yes. Game is short so you can replay the game to get the achievements.
Multiplayer-Only Achievements: No multiplayer
Time-based Achievements: Yes, but required time is short.
High-Skill Achievements: Yes. There are achievements tied to mini-games.
Gameplay:
Camera: Game is a 2D sidescroller. (or 2.5D because of the ability to move front and back thru layers). Camera follows the character, and zooms in and out automatically based on context. No ability to make camera look around based on direct user input.
Movement: Movement is largely 2D, with the ability to move front and back thru layers in the game. Character can run, but no ability to toggle run; You will have to hold down the Run button to run.
Combat: There's no "combat", but there are minigames that are PvE, like Paddle (which is Pong) or PAC (which is Pac-man).
Economy: Nothing to grind. No RPG elements.
UI: UI and HUD size are separated and its size can be controlled via settings. The game is essentially a point and click. All interactables on the screen can be detected via a Ping all Interactables button in the game.
Saves: No manual saves. 4 save slots. Auto-Saves can be triggered manually by interacting with the "code".
Minigames: Lots of minigames. Winning certain games are mandatory for progression.
Bugs: Found a bug where moving in the elevator shifted Frank to a location where he's not supposed to be, so he got teleported into a valid space. Otherwise, did not encounter any game-breaking bugs.
Music:
Composer: Soundtrack is attributed to Ben Yusuf Quinn with credits to Johannes Johannson, and Silk Village.
Number of Tracks: 29 tracks are listed on the official soundtrack on Steam.
OST in Spotify: Yes, album is split to two parts, OST and Bonus albums. Both albums sum up to a total of 29.
Story:
Voice Acting: All text is voiced. Note that also, this game is also voiced by prominent streamers.
Narrative: Game includes a flashback sequence to establish the protagonist's motivations. Game presents out-of-sequence events frequently. Game sometimes merges different timeframes to drive a point in the character's psyche. Time skips are also employed. Take heavy note of the dialogue and environment since it is your anchor to the current timeframe.
Mood and Atmosphere: The game is about inspiring hope. The game's mood revolves around hope, the acquisition of it and its loss when faced with an immovable obstacle. The protag's tone is one of relentless drive after remembering his motivations.
Lifespan:
Chapter Select/New Game+ : None. No new game+. No Chapter select.
DLCs: None, so far.
Duration: This game is not listed yet in HowLongToBeat, but I was able to finish it in under 8 hours.
Graphics:
Textures: Pixel Graphics using the Modern Pixel art style. Certain artwork in the game do not follow the common pixel size shown in the game, but other than that, everything is pretty great.
Graphic Settings: Resolution can be changed and both UI and HUD scale change to match selected resolution. Also, there is one setting that controls the graphic present called Quality, and it can be set to Low, Medium, and High. Setting it to low seems to drop my FPS to ~50 FPS, otherwise, I could not detect the difference between the quality settings.
Optimizations: Since this is a 2D pixel art game and I am using a strong enough PC, I did not detect any FPS drops from playing this game aside from the aforementioned Low Quality setting. Setting it to low doesn't increase GPU or CPU usage, so I am not quite sure what's causing the slowdown.
Accessibility:
Varying Difficulty: None. These are puzzle games hidden behind code.
Controller Support: Yes. But once the game detects input from a controller, the mouse disappears and doesn't comeback.
In-game Button Remapping: Yes.
Subtitles: Yes.
Pause in Cutscenes: Yes.
Skip in Cutscenes: Yes.
Sound Cue has Visual Cue: Yes.
Requires Button Mashing: No, but does include certain minigames that requires button mashing.
Tutorials: Yes.
Photosensitivity Warning: Yes.
tl;dr I'm giving this an 8, mainly because the story is relatable for me, and possibly everyone in the indie game dev scene. Narration is interesting because of the out-of-sequence execution and the way art is presented and drawn is pretty good, altho this isn't the first time I've encountered this pixel art style. Code puzzles are not too difficult, but doesn't reflect the difficulty that I expected it to show. Its pretty nice that they also included minigames. The voice acting on a pixel art game like is a breathe of fresh air for me.
Final thoughts: While this is a journey of an indie game developer, I would imagine that this is the reality for people who dropped their dream because of circumstances they could not control. I am well aware of how competitive the indie game scene is, and the story you see in this game, while not as dramatic, is a common instance in the indie game scene.
And it doesn't help that what they're creating is a VR Social MMO. I would say that it is a niche within a niche since VR is a pricey device with a lot of requirements and games would have to take extra steps to include a VR experience to their games, which increases the price of the game due to the added dev time. Also, I would have said that Social MMO is also a niche, but with this pandemic, the demand for it has dramatically increased.
All in all, One Dreamer is a must-play for people like me, game developers who have fallen from grace because reality is cruel. There's always that one game that captures our hearts and makes us want to do game developerment because we'd love to have others to experience the same magic we felt, but then life happens and we fail. And that hurts. I still have the spark, but with nothing to ignite it with, I fear that that's all I'll be, a spark.
But hey, I've also gotten far, so maybe this time, I'll have enough knowledge and experience to complete the game I've always wanted to do.