I feel a bit bad for dreamwild as it is part of a long backlog I have with fading club’s games, I feel like I will have a relationship with fading club similar to what I have with tatsuki fujimoto, a creator that scratches my sensibilities so good that it feels like the work was made for me, and while dreamwild doesn’t scratch the same itch that psychopomp scratches oh so well, I still find dreamwild very much endearing. I will try to take dreamwild for what it is and not for what it is not, but I will allow me to indulge in saying that I can see a clear and direct line between the presentation of dreamwild to psychopomp, more so with some shared assets between and motifs in both games, more than anythign the eye moon present in both games which is a nice nod, kinda like how fujimoto’s characters look alike between works, also some of the tracks sound kind of alike between dreamwild and the epilogue of psychopomp gold. Dreamwild is a nice little game, the kind of games I want more of, took me 5.2 hours to finish a run according to steam, and while I beat the final boss I then realized I had missed an entire core mechanic for most of the game.
Gameplay-wise dreamwild reminds me of devil daggers (I haven’t played hyper demon… yet), a movement heavy arcade y game, but with a sword that fires stuff, there are that I recall 4 stages, not in sequence, but rather different areas that can be accessed with different difficulties each, the maps have portals that cost points to go into and lead into the different stages and a portal to the hub world where you can heal up, read up on some flavor text from a weird cast of critters and some lore books about the dreamwild. Upgrades are simple and to the point, health, damage and two purchasable items, a potion with 5 uses which can change effects on command and an eye to locate keys to the final stage, so technically 5 stages 7 if you count the 3 phases of the final stage. I have never been too good at bunny hopping or surfing in source games, so there was definitely a learning curve but once I was good enough it was pretty smooth sailing to beat the boss on my first try. Obligatory game-play out of the way I will go to what I really love about fading club’sgames, which is the visual style, in how the author makes 3d models that look like early 3d renders in the best way possible, if the ps1 pre-rendered cut-scenes were actually playable, which surprisingly is something very rare despite the surge of low-poly art and games recently. Even having some pre-rendered backgrounds in the hub world for added style.
I love as always the enemy designs that fading club has, the weird eyes, the embryos, the TV dolphin things the cone faces, now, come thing about it I think I might have seen some of those guys show up in psychopomp which I think is just smart to reuse assets in this way, if you like 3d graphics, specially the weird early stuff do give dreamwild a try. I am so fucking exited for psychopomp 2 and I have hopes that just like psychopomp gold, it will come out on my birthday, but I think getting that once is already a big coincidence, so yeah, dreamwild is very fuckin cool.