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Number of Ratings: 174
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9 people found the following review helpful:
Teaching the spirit of experimentation, July 11, 2018The Dreamhold is presented as a game suitable for beginners, complete with a tutorial voice and the choice between a normal mode and an expert mode. And yet Plotkin's aim is not maximal accessibility or minimal resistance on the way to a winning ending. He is not here to hold your hand. If you expect him to, you will be disappointed; as some of the reviewers have been, who complain about the openness of the world and the complexity of some of the machinery one meets.
But Plotkin signals his intentions early on, when the player is brought into a room stuffed with useless objects that one is nevertheless encouraged to examine one by one. This, surely, can be intimidating to the new player. Yes. But it is also something one must absolutely learn to cope with if one is to navigate any of the classic parser games. The same is true about learning to explore large worlds, about making leaps of dreamlike logic, and about thinking through possible interactions with complex machinery. Rather than hold your hand, Plotkin drops you in the thick of things, with one message: trust me. And you can trust him. Everything will make sense; you won't get the game into an unwinnable state; and with some determination, you will probably be able to win.
But Plotkin takes things a step further. He is not only introducing the player to the skills and techniques need to play old-school parser IF, he is also introducing them to a particularly fine example of the aesthetic of those games. The mysterious, abandoned world; the slow accumulation of hints that build up a narrative framework; the spirit of experimentation; and especially the being rewarded for your hard work with strange and unexpected experiences -- it is all there. Introductory games tend to be limited and boring; and in a sense that means that they do not teach the player the right mindset. They teach her to think in limited and boring ways. The Dreamhold teaches players to persevere, to try strange things, to try and step off the seemingly beaten path.
Whether it actually succeeds is less sure. The existence of a simple solution, bypassing large parts of the game, might fool people into thinking the game has less to offer than it has. (It fooled me, but luckily I replayed it using David Welbourn's walkthrough.) Approached with the right mindset, however, it does a great job preparing player for the world of old-school parser IF. Although it might spoil the player in the meantime -- it's kind of hard to go back to Adventure after playing a game as polished as this!
5 of
5 people found the following review helpful:
Good, but maybe too much for new players?, July 1, 2018I think The Dreamhold was my first IF, maybe three or four years ago. I've dabbled in IF on and off since then, but I've been making a serious attempt recently to get into it, and I thought I'd play this again to see if it still holds up.
The Dreamhold holds up, but it's... weird. It's an introductory game for players completely new to IF, but it's also a sprawling and intimidating puzzler, but it's also a beautiful empty space to explore, but it's also a patchwork biography of the space's owner. The more I think about it, the less I'm sure it all actually works together.
The big problem with the Dreamhold is that the puzzles in some places are, I would argue, far too complex for a first IF. Most of these complex puzzles are optional so that the new player can pick and choose what they do, and that's fair enough, but visualising them (and handling them, if you're not mindful of what actions you can type in a text parser) is pretty challenging. The machine in the Orrery, in particular, is a fine argument for having graphics in your games. There's also a few big red herrings, really interesting objects you can't actually do anything with, which is maybe a mean trick to play on new players.
Most of the puzzles are perfectly fine, though. Many of them are written to encourage experimenting with items and the parser, and I think they do a good job of this. The berries are a fun item to use in particular, flicking them at everything just to see if the game reacts.
I think the real strength of this game is the writing. Andrew Plotkin knows how to write a room description, so that much of the game is beautiful even in text. The story is told in non-chronological scraps and odd objects to find which hint at events far greater than the scope of the game. I enjoyed piecing this backstory together and theorising more than many of the puzzles.
The Dreamhold is still a good game, and a good choice for a first game. Just don't be ashamed to use a walkthrough if you want to poke around the game's backstory and some of its more interesting rooms!
3 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
May not suit all types of players, June 30, 2018If you're a fan of puzzle IF, then the other reviews pretty much cover it - you'll probably enjoy this, and don't let anyone (least of all me) tell you otherwise!
But I found I didn't - I'm not a beginner exactly, but I mostly skew towards Story IF. Plotkin's writing is crisp, and some of the scenery is certainly compelling. But I found myself getting bogged down in mapping (all the non-cardinal directions like NW) and the puzzles. There's a hint system, but it rather primly stops before giving an unblocking suggestion too often.
After resorting to a walkthrough about (Spoiler - click to show)the order of masks at the mirror, my reaction was a slightly irritable "Huh? How was I supposed to figure that out?" But that's ok, this just isn't for me.
Clearly lots of people love these puzzles, but if you're not one of them, please don't despair: there are other styles of story to explore.
- Stas, April 14, 2018
- FORN (Dublin, Ireland ), April 2, 2018
- e.peach, December 28, 2017
- Spike, December 25, 2017
- Prosilire (New York City), December 3, 2017
- xochie, November 7, 2017
2 of
3 people found the following review helpful:
A great intro for a newbie (Me!), October 17, 2017This is only the second IF game I have ever played, after Lost Pig and the first that really required mapping. I really loved it, the story is slight unless you're really paying attention but the tutorial aspect of it works perfectly. I only used the hints to get one of the masks, and then only because I was getting too hasty, and would have figured it out myself if I would have just been willing to spend more time thinking about it.
All in all, a great fun time to play, it definitely whet my appetite to play more IF games!
- Zed (Berkeley, CA), August 7, 2017
- E.K., August 5, 2017
- CMG (NYC), February 15, 2017
- TheAncientOne, January 28, 2017
- Azul, November 25, 2016
- alexvicegrab, October 28, 2016
- Amaral, April 26, 2016
- Dhary, March 10, 2016
4 of
5 people found the following review helpful:
An introductory fantasy game with a haunting atmosphere that doesn't quite gel, February 3, 2016I played Dreamhold years ago, one of the first games I've played, and it's never been quite my favorite. It is intended as being accessible for beginners but still fun for older players. It is a mid-length fantasy game, where you play as a wizard trying to reconstruct his memories in a tower.
The puzzles are of course top-notch, especially with the berries and the stars. However, the plot was never really compelling to me. The protagonist is not an underdog, and everyone likes to root for the under dog.
Actually, I know exactly how to describe this game. This is Citizen Kane for interactive fiction. Reviewing the life of an old, powerful man and seeing how he got there. If you liked Citizen Kane, you will like Dreamhold. If you don't really go for those kinds of characters, you still might like the puzzles quite a bit. For me, it's the kind of game that I love while playing, then forget when I'm done.
- Sobol (Russia), December 16, 2015
- Aryore, December 13, 2015
- paulmr, November 11, 2015
- Sophie Grimaud (France), August 2, 2015
- leanbh, July 30, 2015
- Lanternpaw, May 16, 2015
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