The Dreamhold

by Andrew Plotkin profile

Fantasy
2004

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Number of Ratings: 174
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- MerlaB, January 17, 2021

- CParks (Utah, USA), December 11, 2020

- Greg Frost (Seattle, Washington), December 10, 2020

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
Snippets of a mage's life, October 17, 2020
by Rovarsson (Belgium)
Related reviews: Fantasy

I played The Dreamhold in tutorial-mode. The tutorial voice was really well done, providing not only a basic introduction to IF but also guidance to certain puzzles and avenues of possibilities deep into the game proper. It never gets too intrusive.

There is an immense castle/dungeon to explore, with quite a complex layout. I like making my own maps, so this was a fun excercise on its own. You start off in a recognizable, habitable few rooms, and the further you venture from that center, the more varied and fantastic the locations get. There are a few vantage points up above. The wide sunlit vistas from these are a nice contrast to the dark feeling in the rest of the castle.

The puzzles in tutorial-mode are well-clued and solvable without hints, provided that you are well and truly engaged in solving this game. Especially near the end it is neccesary to understand what you have learned during your journey, instead of just having gone through the motions.

The sunlit vistas I mentioned are welcome sources of light and space in this game. I would have welcomed just a sprinkling of comic relief or self-deprecating humor from the PC to break the sad-and-gloom atmosphere a bit more. After some time searching the halls and domes the air in the castle starts weighing on the player's mind.

The implementation goes very deep, for scenery-objects as well as for "wrong" commands. Most things the player tries are recognized and their impossibility or impracticality explained, instead of getting a standard sarcastic snarl.

Fun, big, entertaining. Three stars for now, maybe more when I replay in expert-mode.

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- C4rd1n4l, September 24, 2020

- Durafen, September 19, 2020

- Zape, September 4, 2020

- kioko_ct, August 20, 2020

- peachesncream, August 16, 2020

- Arrowhead12 (Edmonton, Alberta), June 11, 2020

- quackoquack, June 10, 2020

- kierlani, May 20, 2020

- Zoe Victoria (Under your bed), April 24, 2020

- Sitri Salmacis (Atlanta), April 9, 2020

- Sayeth (Lexington, KY), April 2, 2020

- Sammel, March 20, 2020

- Vicusol, February 16, 2020

- Phlegethon, January 27, 2020

- Jonathan Verso, December 10, 2019

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
You do not find yourself afraid. A review is more than merely interesting., June 24, 2019

With no memory of who you are or what you are doing there, you have found yourself in a bleak stone chamber with only one exit. Clambering out and up a staircase, the breath catches in your throat as you realize where you are - a dreamhold, the private home and study of an immortal wizard. Your only goal would appear to be escape - but why are you drawn to collecting strange masks? Either way, you must explore this place, and all of the magical mystery within.

The Dreamhold was designed as an introductory story to parser IF, and as a result you are guided by the Voice, who uses italicized brackets to give advice, hints, and occasionally self-deprecating commentary:

[Amnesia. Yes, it's a cliché, but it'll do for a tutorial.]

There is an expert mode for those readers that enjoy fiendish puzzles (I'm not quite prepared for that yet!), and I like the idea that once-IF newbies, after playing through it the first time and then many other IF games, tackling that challenge as a final exam of sorts. I did enjoy solving the mystery on normal, and the dreamhold was brilliantly designed and well-crafted.

However, the reason why I've not given it a full score is that I did not quite understand the story or the couple of endings that I managed to find, and perhaps there could have been a clearer backstory or some sort of helpful coda or explainer at the end. Perhaps I was just being particularly obtuse, and perhaps one day I'll amend it if I do complete expert mode and that illuminates things.

Nonetheless this game does exactly what it sets out to do, which is provide a great introduction to parsers. Four multicoloured masks - in any order, I'm not picky (unlike some!).

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- elias67, March 15, 2019

- Stian, January 22, 2019

- mils32k, January 7, 2019

- Superfreq (Southern Gulf Islands, British Columbia, Canada), December 20, 2018

- davidar, November 10, 2018


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